CVE-2023-4001 - CVE House
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Status published Medium CVE-2023-4001

Grub2: bypass the grub password protection feature

Vulnerability Description

An authentication bypass flaw was found in GRUB due to the way that GRUB uses the UUID of a device to search for the configuration file that contains the password hash for the GRUB password protection feature. An attacker capable of attaching an external drive such as a USB stick containing a file system with a duplicate UUID (the same as in the "/boot/" file system) can bypass the GRUB password protection feature on UEFI systems, which enumerate removable drives before non-removable ones. This issue was introduced in a downstream patch in Red Hat's version of grub2 and does not affect the upstream package.

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:

  • Red Hat would like to thank Maxim Suhanov for reporting this issue.

Affected Vendor

Affected Software

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 Extended Update Support, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 Extended Update Support, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
Vulnerable Versions:
1:2.06-70.el9_3.2, 1:2.06-27.el9_0.16, 1:2.06-61.el9_2.2

Timeline

Official Publish: January 15th, 2024
Last Modified: November 20th, 2025
Added to House: July 22nd, 2026

CVSS Vectors

V3: CVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Weaknesses (CWE)