CVE-2024-48991

Qualys discovered that needrestart, before version 3.8, allows local attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by winning a race condition and tricking needrestart into running their own, fake Python interpreter (instead of the system's real Python interpreter). The initial security fix (6ce6136) introduced a regression which was subsequently resolved (42af5d3).

The Qualys Threat Research Unit discovered several local privilege escalation vulnerabilities in needrestart, a utility to check which daemons need to be restarted after library upgrades. A local attacker can execute arbitrary code as root by tricking needrestart into running the Python interpreter with an attacker-controlled PYTHONPATH environment variable (CVE-2024-48990) or running the Ruby interpreter with an attacker-controlled RUBYLIB environment variable (CVE-2024-48992). Additionally a local attacker can trick needrestart into running a fake Python interpreter (CVE-2024-48991) or cause needrestart to call the Perl module Module::ScanDeps with attacker-controlled files (CVE-2024-11003).