What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2018-14665

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.6 v3.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 27.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2018-10-25 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-863

Description

A flaw was found in xorg-x11-server before 1.20.3. An incorrect permission check for -modulepath and -logfile options when starting Xorg. X server allows unprivileged users with the ability to log in to the system via physical console to escalate their privileges and run arbitrary code under root privileges.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 16.04, 18.04, 18.10
• Debian Linux: 9.0
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Desktop: 7.0
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Server: 7.0
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Aus: 7.6
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Eus: 7.6
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Tus: 7.6
• RedHat Enterprise Linux Workstation: 7.0
• xorg-x11-server: before 1.20.3 — fixed in 1.20.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: xorg-x11-server 1.20.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/154942/Xorg-X11-Server-SUID-modulepath-Privilege-Escalation.html
• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/155276/Xorg-X11-Server-Local-Privilege-Escalation.html
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/105741
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1041948
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:3410
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2018-14665
• https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/commit/50c0cf885a6e91c0ea71fb49fa8f1b7c86fe330e
• https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/commit/8a59e3b7dbb30532a7c3769c555e00d7c4301170
• https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-announce/2018-October/002927.html
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201810-09
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3802-1/
• https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4328

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