CVE-2020-8903 - CVE House
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Status published High CVE-2020-8903

Priviged Escalation in Google Cloud Platform's Guest-OSLogin

Vulnerability Description

A vulnerability in Google Cloud Platform's guest-oslogin versions between 20190304 and 20200507 allows a user that is only granted the role "roles/compute.osLogin" to escalate privileges to root. Using their membership to the "adm" group, users with this role are able to read the DHCP XID from the systemd journal. Using the DHCP XID, it is then possible to set the IP address and hostname of the instance to any value, which is then stored in /etc/hosts. An attacker can then point metadata.google.internal to an arbitrary IP address and impersonate the GCE metadata server which make it is possible to instruct the OS Login PAM module to grant administrative privileges. All images created after 2020-May-07 (20200507) are fixed, and if you cannot update, we recommend you edit /etc/group/security.conf and remove the "adm" user from the OS Login entry.

Impact Analysis

Refer to official advisory for detailed impact metrics.

Remediation

Ensure systems are updated to the latest vendor-supplied patch levels.

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Credits & Attribution

The following person or organization is credited with identifying this vulnerability, as recorded in the NVD database:

  • Chris Moberly

Affected Vendor

Affected Software

guest-oslogin
Vulnerable Versions:
20190304, 20200507

Timeline

Official Publish: June 22nd, 2020
Last Modified: August 4th, 2024
Added to House: July 21st, 2026

CVSS Vectors

Weaknesses (CWE)