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CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2018-15686

Deserialization of Untrusted Data

Published: Oct 26, 2018 | Modified: Jun 09, 2025
CVSS 3.x
7.8
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
7.2 HIGH
AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
3.6 MODERATE
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L
Ubuntu
MEDIUM
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Additional information
NVDhttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-15686
CWEhttps://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/502.html

A vulnerability in unit_deserialize of systemd allows an attacker to supply arbitrary state across systemd re-execution via NotifyAccess. This can be used to improperly influence systemd execution and possibly lead to root privilege escalation. Affected releases are systemd versions up to and including 239.

Weakness

The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently ensuring that the resulting data will be valid.

Affected Software

NameVendorStart VersionEnd Version
Ubuntu_linuxCanonical16.04 (including)16.04 (including)
Ubuntu_linuxCanonical18.04 (including)18.04 (including)
Ubuntu_linuxCanonical18.10 (including)18.10 (including)
Debian_linuxDebian8.0 (including)8.0 (including)
Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.4 for RHEL 7RedHatansible-tower-34/ansible-tower-memcached:1.4.15-28*
Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.4 for RHEL 7RedHatansible-tower-35/ansible-tower-memcached:1.4.15-28*
Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.4 for RHEL 7RedHatansible-tower-37/ansible-tower-memcached-rhel7:1.4.15-28*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7RedHatsystemd-0:219-67.el7*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 Advanced Update SupportRedHatsystemd-0:219-42.el7_4.20*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 Telco Extended Update SupportRedHatsystemd-0:219-42.el7_4.20*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 Update Services for SAP SolutionsRedHatsystemd-0:219-42.el7_4.20*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 Extended Update SupportRedHatsystemd-0:219-57.el7_5.9*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 Extended Update SupportRedHatsystemd-0:219-62.el7_6.11*
SystemdUbuntubionic*
SystemdUbuntucosmic*
SystemdUbuntudevel*
SystemdUbuntuesm-infra/bionic*
SystemdUbuntuesm-infra/xenial*
SystemdUbuntuupstream*
SystemdUbuntuxenial*

Potential Mitigations

  • Make fields transient to protect them from deserialization.
  • An attempt to serialize and then deserialize a class containing transient fields will result in NULLs where the transient data should be. This is an excellent way to prevent time, environment-based, or sensitive variables from being carried over and used improperly.

References

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