Systemd
CVE-2020-13776
MEDIUM
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A06:2025 - Insecure Design
ASVS 5.0
V8 - Authorization Least privilege enforcement
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Privilege Escalation The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Impact | CVSS score of 6.7 (MEDIUM). Attack characteristics: local attack vector, high complexity, low privileges required, user interaction required. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | A local attacker with access to the system could escalate privileges to gain unauthorized elevated access. |
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Alert meAnalysisAI
systemd through v245 mishandles numerical usernames such as ones composed of decimal digits or 0x followed by hex digits, as demonstrated by use of root privileges when privileges of the 0x0 user. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.7). This Improper Privilege Management vulnerability could allow attackers to escalate privileges to gain unauthorized elevated access.
RemediationAI
A vendor patch is available. Apply the latest security update as soon as possible. Apply principle of least privilege, validate privilege transitions, implement proper role separation.
Affects your stack
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Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
This vulnerability is classified as Improper Privilege Management (CWE-269), which allows attackers to escalate privileges to gain unauthorized elevated access. systemd through v245 mishandles numerical usernames such as ones composed of decimal digits or 0x followed by hex digits, as demonstrated by use of root privileges when privileges of the 0x0 user account were intended. NOTE: this issue exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2017-1000082. Affected products include: Systemd Project Systemd, Netapp Active Iq Unified Manager, Netapp Solidfire \& Hci Management Node, Fedoraproject Fedora.
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- Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources
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Severity by source
AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Primary rating from NVD · only source for this CVE.
CVSS VectorNVD
DescriptionNVD
systemd through v245 mishandles numerical usernames such as ones composed of decimal digits or 0x followed by hex digits, as demonstrated by use of root privileges when privileges of the 0x0 user account were intended. NOTE: this issue exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2017-1000082.
Threat Intelligence Overview
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
GitHub
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Privilege escalation occurs when an attacker leverages flaws in access control mechanisms to gain permissions beyond what they were originally granted.
Affected Products (CPE)NVD
Stack-based buffer overflow in the getpwnam and getgrnam functions of the NSS module nss-mymachines in systemd. Rated cr
Integer overflow in the valid_user_field function in journal/journald-native.c in systemd allows remote attackers to cau
systemd before 247 does not adequately block local privilege escalation for some Sudo configurations, e.g., plausible su
A flaw in systemd v228 in /src/basic/fs-util.c caused world writable suid files to be created when using the systemd tim
It was discovered that a systemd service that uses DynamicUser property can get new privileges through the execution of
It was discovered that a systemd service that uses DynamicUser property can create a SUID/SGID binary that would be allo
A vulnerability in unit_deserialize of systemd allows an attacker to supply arbitrary state across systemd re-execution
systemd-tmpfiles in systemd through 237 mishandles symlinks present in non-terminal path components, which allows local
basic/unit-name.c in systemd prior to 246.15, 247.8, 248.5, and 249.1 has a Memory Allocation with an Excessive Size Val
In systemd before v242-rc4, it was discovered that pam_systemd does not properly sanitize the environment before using t
A race condition in chown_one() of systemd allows an attacker to cause systemd to set arbitrary permissions on arbitrary
systemd v233 and earlier fails to safely parse usernames starting with a numeric digit (e.g. Rated critical severity (CV
Exploit-DB