CVE-2023-26604

Publication date 3 March 2023

Last updated 24 July 2024

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

systemd before 247 does not adequately block local privilege escalation for some Sudo configurations, e.g., plausible sudoers files in which the "systemctl status" command may be executed. Specifically, systemd does not set LESSSECURE to 1, and thus other programs may be launched from the less program. This presents a substantial security risk when running systemctl from Sudo, because less executes as root when the terminal size is too small to show the complete systemctl output.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
systemd	24.04 LTS noble	Not affected
	23.10 mantic	Not affected
	23.04 lunar	Not affected
	22.10 kinetic	Not affected
	22.04 LTS jammy	Not affected
	20.04 LTS focal	Vulnerable
	18.04 LTS bionic	Vulnerable
	16.04 LTS xenial	Needs evaluation
	14.04 LTS trusty	Needs evaluation

Notes

rodrigo-zaiden

on https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5666 upstream claims this is not a vulnerability. upstream feature SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE implemented in systemd version 247.

mdeslaur

This is only an issue if an administrator configured systemctl access using sudo instead of using policykit, which is an unlikely scenario. Per Red Hat bug, systemctl commands that use the pager can run unprivileged. Setting priority to "low".

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
systemd	Upstream: 612ebf6 Upstream: 0a42426 Upstream: b8f736b

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	7.8 · High
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	Low
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	High
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	High
Vector	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H