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Glibc Tunables Privilege Escalation CVE-2023-4911 (aka Looney Tunables)

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Glibc Tunables Privilege Escalation CVE-2023-4911 (aka Looney Tunables)

Disclosed
10/03/2023
Created
12/20/2023

Description

A buffer overflow exists in the GNU C Library's dynamic loader ld.so while processing the GLIBC_TUNABLES environment variable. This issue allows an local attacker to use maliciously crafted GLIBC_TUNABLES when launching binaries with SUID permission to execute code in the context of the root user. This module targets glibc packaged on Ubuntu and Debian. The specific glibc versions this module targets are: Ubuntu: 2.35-0ubuntu3.4 > 2.35 2.37-0ubuntu2.1 > 2.37 2.38-1ubuntu6 > 2.38 Debian: 2.31-13-deb11u7 > 2.31 2.36-9-deb12u3 > 2.36 Fedora 37 and 38 and other distributions of linux also come packaged with versions of glibc vulnerable to CVE-2023-4911 however this module does not target them.

Author(s)

  • Qualys Threat Research Unit
  • blasty <peter@haxx.in>
  • jheysel-r7

Platform

Linux,Unix

Architectures

x86, x64

Development

Module Options

To display the available options, load the module within the Metasploit console and run the commands 'show options' or 'show advanced':

msf > use exploit/linux/local/glibc_tunables_priv_esc
msf exploit(glibc_tunables_priv_esc) > show targets
    ...targets...
msf exploit(glibc_tunables_priv_esc) > set TARGET < target-id >
msf exploit(glibc_tunables_priv_esc) > show options
    ...show and set options...
msf exploit(glibc_tunables_priv_esc) > exploit

Time is precious, so I don’t want to do something manually that I can automate. Leveraging the Metasploit Framework when automating any task keeps us from having to re-create the wheel as we can use the existing libraries and focus our efforts where it matters.

– Jim O’Gorman | President, Offensive Security

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