CVE-2018-1122

Severity: high (CVSS 7.0 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2018-05-23 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-829

Description

procps-ng before version 3.3.15 is vulnerable to a local privilege escalation in top. If a user runs top with HOME unset in an attacker-controlled directory, the attacker could achieve privilege escalation by exploiting one of several vulnerabilities in the config_file() function.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 12.04, 14.04, 16.04, 17.10, 18.04
Debian Linux: 7.0, 8.0, 9.0
Procps-Ng Project Procps-Ng: before 3.3.15 — fixed in 3.3.15

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Procps-Ng Project Procps-Ng 3.3.15. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-10/msg00058.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-10/msg00059.html
http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2018/q2/122
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/104214
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2019:2189
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2020:0595
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2018-1122
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/05/msg00021.html
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201805-14
https://usn.ubuntu.com/3658-1/
https://usn.ubuntu.com/3658-3/
https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4208

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