CVE-2018-20839

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.3 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2019-05-17 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

systemd 242 changes the VT1 mode upon a logout, which allows attackers to read cleartext passwords in certain circumstances, such as watching a shutdown, or using Ctrl-Alt-F1 and Ctrl-Alt-F2. This occurs because the KDGKBMODE (aka current keyboard mode) check is mishandled.

Affected products

NetApp Cn1610 Firmware: all versions
NetApp Snapprotect: all versions
NetApp Solidfire & Hci Management Node: all versions
systemd: 242

References

http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/108389
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1803993
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/9725f1a10f80f5e0ae7d9b60547458622aeb322f
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/12378
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/rf9fa47ab66495c78bb4120b0754dd9531ca2ff0430f6685ac9b07772%40%3Cdev.mina.apache.org%3E
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20190530-0002/
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/108389
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1803993
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/9725f1a10f80f5e0ae7d9b60547458622aeb322f
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/12378
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/rf9fa47ab66495c78bb4120b0754dd9531ca2ff0430f6685ac9b07772%40%3Cdev.mina.apache.org%3E
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20190530-0002/

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