Trivial Bug In X.Org Server Gives Root Permissions On Linux, BSD Systems

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: A vulnerability that is trivial to exploit allows privilege escalation to root level on Linux and BSD distributions using X.Org server, the open source implementation of the X Window System that offers the graphical environment. The flaw is now identified as CVE-2018-14665 (credited to security researcher Narendra Shinde). It has been present in xorg-server for two years, since version 1.19.0 and is exploitable by a limited user as long as the X server runs with elevated permissions.

An advisory on Thursday describes the problem as an 'incorrect command-line parameter validation' that also allows an attacker to overwrite arbitrary files. Privilege escalation can be accomplished via the -modulepath argument by setting an insecure path to modules loaded by the X.org server. Arbitrary file overwrite is possible through the -logfile argument, because of improper verification when parsing the option. Apart from OpenBSD, other operating systems affected by the bug include Debian and Ubuntu, Fedora and its downstream distro Red Hat Enterprise Linux along with its community-supported counterpart CentOS.

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