What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2019-3698: nagios cron job allows privilege escalation from user nagios to root

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.0 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2020-02-28 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-59

Description

UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following vulnerability in the cronjob shipped with nagios of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11; openSUSE Factory allows local attackers to cause cause DoS or potentially escalate privileges by winning a race. This issue affects: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 nagios version 3.5.1-5.27 and prior versions. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 nagios version 3.0.6-1.25.36.3.1 and prior versions. openSUSE Factory nagios version 4.4.5-2.1 and prior versions.

Affected products

• Nagios Enterprises nagios: before 3.5.1; before 3.0.6 — fixed in 3.0.6, 3.5.1
• openSUSE Backports Sle: 15.0-sp1
• openSUSE Leap: 15.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Nagios Enterprises nagios 3.0.6, 3.5.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-04/msg00014.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-04/msg00022.html
• https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1156309
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-04/msg00014.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-04/msg00022.html
• https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1156309

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