Bug 2079999 (CVE-2022-29799)

Microsoft has discovered several vulnerabilities, collectively referred to as Nimbuspwn, that could allow an attacker to elevate privileges to root on many Linux desktop endpoints. The vulnerabilities can be chained together to gain root privileges on Linux systems, allowing attackers to deploy payloads, like a root backdoor, and perform other malicious actions via arbitrary root code execution. Moreover, the Nimbuspwn vulnerabilities could potentially be leveraged as a vector for root access by more sophisticated threats, such as malware or ransomware, to achieve greater impact on vulnerable devices.

The vulnerabilities were found in the systemd unit networkd-dispatcher:

- CVE-2022-29799: directory traversal
- CVE-2022-29800: time-of-check-time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition
- symlink race condition

Details:

[0] https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2022/04/26/microsoft-finds-new-elevation-of-privilege-linux-vulnerability-nimbuspwn/