CVE-2025-61667

The Datadog Agent collects events and metrics from hosts and sends them to Datadog. A vulnerability within the Datadog Linux Host Agent versions 7.65.0 through 7.70.2 exists due to insufficient permissions being set on the opt/datadog-agent/python-scripts/__pycache__ directory during installation. Code in this directory is only run by the Agent during Agent install/upgrades. This could allow an attacker with local access to modify files in this directory, which would then subsequently be run when the Agent is upgraded, resulting in local privilege escalation. This issue requires local access to the host and a valid low privilege account to be vulnerable. Note that this vulnerability only impacts the Linux Host Agent. Other variations of the Agent including the container, kubernetes, windows host and other agents are not impacted. Version 7.71.0 contains a patch for the issue.

Weakness

During installation, installed file permissions are set to allow anyone to modify those files.

Potential Mitigations

• Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
• Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/1.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/127.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/81.html

References

• https://github.com/DataDog/datadog-agent/security/advisories/GHSA-6852-76c5-6cmg