Bug 1866270 (CVE-2020-15708) - CVE-2020-15708 libvirt: incorrect permissions on the UNIX domain socket allows local attacker to escalate privileges
Summary: CVE-2020-15708 libvirt: incorrect permissions on the UNIX domain socket allow...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: CVE-2020-15708
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Red Hat Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On: 1866271 1866272
Blocks: 1866273
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2020-08-05 09:37 UTC by Dhananjay Arunesh
Modified: 2024-03-20 10:30 UTC (History)
21 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
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Doc Text:
A flaw was found in libvirt, where an incorrect permissions issue occurs on the UNIX domain socket. This flaw allows a local attacker to access libvirt and escalate their privileges. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to confidentiality, integrity, and system availability.
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2020-08-10 15:48:13 UTC
Embargoed:

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Description Dhananjay Arunesh 2020-08-05 09:37:27 UTC 
A vulnerability was found in libvirt, where an incorrect permissions on the UNIX domain socket. A local attacker could use this issue to access libvirt and escalate privileges.

References:
https://bugs.mageia.org/27038
Comment 1 Dhananjay Arunesh 2020-08-05 09:39:26 UTC 
Created libvirt tracking bugs for this issue:

Affects: fedora-all [bug 1866271]


Created mingw-libvirt tracking bugs for this issue:

Affects: fedora-all [bug 1866272]
Comment 2 Daniel Berrangé 2020-08-05 09:53:27 UTC 
This is an Ubuntu specific flaw because they change the libvirt defaults in their distro to disable use of polkit for authentication, without also changing the socket permissisons.

The normal upstream behaviour is that the socket is mode 0666, and when an unprivileged user connects, polkit will validate the client and require them to provide the root password before libvirt allows any RPC calls to be performed.

RHEL/Fedora follow this upstram behaviour and use polkit for auth, so there is no security flaw here.
Comment 4 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2020-08-10 15:56:43 UTC 
Statement:

This is an Ubuntu specific flaw. The versions of `libvirt` as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and RHEL Advanced Virtualization are not affected by this issue, as they leverage `polkit` for authentication. More specifically, the socket permission is 0666, and when an unprivileged user connects, `polkit` will validate the client and require them to provide the root password before `libvirt` allows any RPC calls to be performed.
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