Versions of the Amazon AWS Apache Log4j hotpatch package before log4j-cve-2021-44228-hotpatch-1.3.5 are affected by a race condition that could lead to a local privilege escalation. This Hotpatch package is not a replacement for updating to a log4j version that mitigates CVE-2021-44228 or CVE-2021-45046; it provides a temporary mitigation to CVE-2021-44228 by hotpatching the local Java virtual machines. To do so, it iterates through all running Java processes, performs several checks, and executes the Java virtual machine with the same permissions and capabilities as the running process to load the hotpatch. A local user could cause the hotpatch script to execute a binary with elevated privileges by running a custom java process that performs exec() of an SUID binary after the hotpatch has observed the process path and before it has observed its effective user ID.
Metrics
CVSS Version: 3.1 |
Base Score: 7 HIGH Vector: CVSS:3.1/AC:H/AV:L/A:H/C:H/I:H/PR:L/S:U/UI:N
l➤ Exploitability Metrics: Attack Vector (AV)* LOCAL Attack Complexity (AC)* HIGH Privileges Required (PR)* LOW User Interaction (UI)* NONE Scope (S)* UNCHANGED
l➤ Impact Metrics: Confidentiality Impact (C)* HIGH Integrity Impact (I)* HIGH Availability Impact (A)* HIGH
Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
CWE-ID: CWE Name: n/a Source: n/a
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)