Security News

A critical severity vulnerability in the Samba platform could allow attackers to gain remote code execution with root privileges on servers. Samba is an interoperability suite that allows Windows and Linus/Unix-based hosts to work together and share file and print services with multiplatform devices on a common network, including SMB file-sharing.

Samba has issued software updates to address multiple security vulnerabilities that, if successfully exploited, could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code with the highest privileges on affected installations. Chief among them is CVE-2021-44142, which impacts all versions of Samba before 4.13.17 and concerns an out-of-bounds heap read/write vulnerability in the VFS module "Vfs fruit" that provides compatibility with Apple SMB clients.

Samba has addressed a critical severity vulnerability that can let attackers gain remote code execution with root privileges on servers running vulnerable software. Samba is an SMB networking protocol re-implementation that provides file sharing and printing services across many platforms, allowing Linux, Windows, and macOS users to share files over a network.

A 12-year-old security vulnerability has been disclosed in a system utility called Polkit that grants attackers root privileges on Linux systems, even as a proof-of-concept exploit has emerged in the wild merely hours after technical details of the bug became public. Dubbed "PwnKit" by cybersecurity firm Qualys, the weakness impacts a component in polkit called pkexec, a program that's installed by default on every major Linux distribution such as Ubunti, Debian, Fedora, and CentOS. Polkit is a toolkit for controlling system-wide privileges in Unix-like operating systems, and provides a mechanism for non-privileged processes to communicate with privileged processes.

After adding a Polkit rule to permit our account to do "Root" stuff, # we get automatic, temporary authorisation to run as the root user... $ pkexec ls -l /etc/polkit-1/rules. Rules # And if we put no command and no username on the command line, pkexec # assumes that we want a shell, so it runs our preferred shell, # making us root until we exit back to the parent shell $ pkexec bash-5.1# id uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),... exit $ id uid=1042(duck) gid=1042(duck) groups=1042(duck),.... As well as checking its access control rules, pkexec also performs a range of other "Security hardening" operations before it runs your chosen command with added privileges.

A memory corruption vulnerability in PolKit, a component used in major Linux distributions and some Unix-like operating systems, can be easily exploited by local unprivileged users to gain full root privileges. While the vulnerability is not exploitable remotely and doesn't, in itself, allow arbitrary code execution, it can be used by attackers that have already gained a foothold on a vulnerable host to escalate their privileges and achieve that capability.

Linux vendors on Tuesday issued patches for a memory corruption vulnerability in a component called polkit that allows an unprivileged logged-in user to gain full root access on a system in its default configuration. Security vendor Qualys found the flaw and published details in a coordinated disclosure.

A vulnerability in Polkit's pkexec component identified as CVE-2021-4034 is present in the default configuration of all major Linux distributions and can be exploited to gain full root privileges on the system, researchers warn today. Researchers at Qualys information security company found that the pkexec program could be used by local attackers to increase privileges to root on default installations of Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and CentOS. They warn that PwnKit is likely exploitable on other Linux operating systems as well.

A vulnerability in Polkit's pkexec component that is present in the default configuration of all major Linux distributions can be exploited to gain full root privileges on the system, researchers warn today. Identified as CVE-2021-4034 and named PwnKit, the security issue has been tracked to the initial commit of pkexec, more than 12 years ago, meaning that all Polkit versions are affected.

Two security vulnerabilities that impact the Control Web Panel software can be chained by unauthenticated attackers to gain remote code execution as root on vulnerable Linux servers. CWP, previously known as CentOS Web Panel, is a free Linux control panel for managing dedicated web hosting servers and virtual private servers.