CVE Catalog

CVE-2024-9050

HighCVSS 7.8
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.45%

36th percentile - higher than 36% of all known CVEs

Summary

The libreswan plugin for NetworkManager fails to properly sanitize VPN configuration from local unprivileged users. Lack of proper escaping of special characters in key-value format allows values to be interpreted as keys, enabling abuse of the `leftupdown` parameter to execute arbitrary commands.

Risk Assessment

The risk involves local privilege escalation and potential code execution as root by an unprivileged user who can create a malicious VPN configuration.

Recommendation

Immediately update the NetworkManager-libreswan package to a patched version. Until the update, restrict local users' access to VPN configuration.

Related vulnerabilities

Original NVD description (English source)

A flaw was found in the libreswan client plugin for NetworkManager (NetkworkManager-libreswan), where it fails to properly sanitize the VPN configuration from the local unprivileged user. In this configuration, composed by a key-value format, the plugin fails to escape special characters, leading the application to interpret values as keys. One of the most critical parameters that could be abused by a malicious user is the `leftupdown`key. This key takes an executable command as a value and is used to specify what executes as a callback in NetworkManager-libreswan to retrieve configuration settings back to NetworkManager. As NetworkManager uses Polkit to allow an unprivileged user to control the system's network configuration, a malicious actor could achieve local privilege escalation and potential code execution as root in the targeted machine by creating a malicious configuration.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS