CVE-2019-5021

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 6.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2019-05-08 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-258

Description

Versions of the Official Alpine Linux Docker images (since v3.3) contain a NULL password for the `root` user. This vulnerability appears to be the result of a regression introduced in December of 2015. Due to the nature of this issue, systems deployed using affected versions of the Alpine Linux container which utilize Linux PAM, or some other mechanism which uses the system shadow file as an authentication database, may accept a NULL password for the `root` user.

Affected products

F5 Big-Ip Controller: 1.2.1
Gliderlabs Docker-Alpine: from 3.3
openSUSE Leap: 15.0, 15.1

References

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-06/msg00004.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/108288
https://alpinelinux.org/posts/Docker-image-vulnerability-CVE-2019-5021.html
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20190510-0001/
https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K25551452
https://talosintelligence.com/vulnerability_reports/TALOS-2019-0782
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-06/msg00004.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/108288
https://alpinelinux.org/posts/Docker-image-vulnerability-CVE-2019-5021.html
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20190510-0001/
https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K25551452
https://talosintelligence.com/vulnerability_reports/TALOS-2019-0782

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