What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-6018: Pam-config: lpe from unprivileged to allow_active in pam

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 1.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2025-07-23 · updated 2026-06-30
• Weakness: CWE-863

Description

A Local Privilege Escalation (LPE) vulnerability has been discovered in pam-config within Linux Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM). This flaw allows an unprivileged local attacker (for example, a user logged in via SSH) to obtain the elevated privileges normally reserved for a physically present, "allow_active" user. The highest risk is that the attacker can then perform all allow_active yes Polkit actions, which are typically restricted to console users, potentially gaining unauthorized control over system configurations, services, or other sensitive operations.

Affected products

• SUSE Pam-Config: 1.1.8-24.71.1

References

• https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-6018
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2372693
• https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1243226
• https://cdn2.qualys.com/2025/06/17/suse15-pam-udisks-lpe.txt
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/08/28/4
• https://cdn2.qualys.com/2025/06/17/suse15-pam-udisks-lpe.txt

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