CVE Catalog

CVE-2025-6018

HighCVSS 7.8
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Elevated risk
0.96%

57th percentile - higher than 57% of all known CVEs

Summary

A Local Privilege Escalation (LPE) vulnerability has been discovered in pam-config within Linux Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM). This flaw allows an unprivileged local attacker (e.g., logged in via SSH) to obtain elevated privileges reserved for a physically present "allow_active" user.

Risk Assessment

The attacker can perform all allow_active yes Polkit actions, typically restricted to console users, potentially gaining unauthorized control over system configurations, services, or other sensitive operations.

Recommendation

Immediately update the pam-config package to a patched version and restrict SSH access for unprivileged users.

Related vulnerabilities

Original NVD description (English source)

A Local Privilege Escalation (LPE) vulnerability has been discovered in pam-config within Linux Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM). This flaw allows an unprivileged local attacker (for example, a user logged in via SSH) to obtain the elevated privileges normally reserved for a physically present, "allow_active" user. The highest risk is that the attacker can then perform all allow_active yes Polkit actions, which are typically restricted to console users, potentially gaining unauthorized control over system configurations, services, or other sensitive operations.

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