Patch Lady – 31 days of Paranoia – Day 18

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Today we’re taking a break from our normal paranoia to discuss a recent vulnerability.  The headlines imply that a guest user can gain admin rights vi
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Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Well yes, RID hijacking is a privilege escalation attack, where a non-admin can gain admin rights. That is indeed quite different from being authenticate straight to admin.

However, lots of organizations have users with access levels other than “none” and “admin”, and that’s where RID hijacking becomes a problem.

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Libssh sounds like Linux terminology to me. Is this a Linux vulnerability, a Windows vulnerability, or both?

-- rc primak

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If the defective libssh is used in a Linux server role, yes. I do not know if Microsoft used any of the libssh code.

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There might exist Windows programs which are using the indicated defective libssh.

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The libssh, while disturbing, isn’t quite as bad as it appears at first glance.

Sites like github were not vulnerable because they didn’t use the affected libraries.  Distros which use libssh2, such as RHEL6 and RHEL7, are not affected.

Should you check your systems?  Absolutely, and patch them if you happen to be running a vulnerable version.

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Actually, I think you got that reversed. In Fedora (the free, leading-edge version of RHEL), libssh2 is older and less secure than the newer libssh.

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f28/release-notes/sysadmin/Security/

Ubuntu 18.04 security advisory about libssh:

https://usn.ubuntu.com/3795-1/

-- rc primak

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