Vulnerabilities
Misconfiguration
Compliance
CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2018-16888

Execution with Unnecessary Privileges

Published: Jan 14, 2019 | Modified: Nov 21, 2024
CVSS 3.x
4.7
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.x
1.9 LOW
AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
4.4 LOW
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Ubuntu
LOW
Vulnerability-free packages from our partners
root.io logo minimus.io logo echo.ai logo
Additional information
NVDhttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-16888
CWEhttps://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/250.html

It was discovered systemd does not correctly check the content of PIDFile files before using it to kill processes. When a service is run from an unprivileged user (e.g. User field set in the service file), a local attacker who is able to write to the PIDFile of the mentioned service may use this flaw to trick systemd into killing other services and/or privileged processes. Versions before v237 are vulnerable.

Weakness

The product performs an operation at a privilege level that is higher than the minimum level required, which creates new weaknesses or amplifies the consequences of other weaknesses.

Affected Software

NameVendorStart VersionEnd Version
SystemdSystemd_project*237 (excluding)
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*
SystemdUbuntuesm-infra/xenial*
SystemdUbuntuupstream*
SystemdUbuntuxenial*

Potential Mitigations

References

Aqua Security is the largest pure-play cloud native security company, providing customers the freedom to innovate and run their businesses with minimal friction. The Aqua Cloud Native Security Platform provides prevention, detection, and response automation across the entire application lifecycle to secure the build, secure cloud infrastructure and secure running workloads wherever they are deployed.
Copyright © 2026 Aqua Security Software Ltd.   Privacy Policy | Terms of Use