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Advisory severityMedium6.2Red Hat Linux

Medium [CVE-2024-2905] Rpm-ostree: world-readable /etc/shadow file

This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2024-2905 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 Extended Update Support, Red Hat package: rpm-ostree.

Aggregated and source-linked by VulniPulse. Data sources, validation and limitations.

CVE-2024-2905 Source published Source updated

VulniPulse record published

CVE-2024-2905
Affected products & platforms
Red Hat LinuxRed Hat Enterprise Linux
Open source advisory

Summary

A security vulnerability has been discovered within rpm-ostree, pertaining to the /etc/shadow file in default builds having the world-readable bit enabled. This issue arises from the default permissions being set at a higher level than recommended, potentially exposing sensitive authentication data to unauthorized access.

This vulnerability lets local, unconfined applications read the hashed password for all users of the system from those files. To gain further access to the system, those hashed passwords need to be brute-forced to discover the real passwords that may be used to authenticate as a more privileged user on the system, for example over SSH.

On systems with SELinux enabled and in enforcing mode, access to those files is limited to unconfined (usually interactive) users, unconfined systemd services and privileged containers. Confined daemons, users and containers are not able to access them.

Only OpenShift clusters installed on OCP version 4.14 and later are affected. Clusters with no passwords set for any users (i.e. only SSH keys were used; the OpenShift default) are not impacted by this vulnerability even though it is present on the node.

Red Hat severity: Moderate — CVSS 6.2 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N). Weakness: CWE-732.

Is CVE-2024-2905 exploited?

No exploitation is reported in the sources VulniPulse tracks: CVE-2024-2905 is not in the CISA KEV catalog (checked ) and this advisory does not report exploitation. That is not proof the vulnerability cannot be exploited.

How do I fix CVE-2024-2905?

Upgrade to a fixed release named by Red Hat:

  • rpm-ostree-0:2025.5-1.el10
  • rpm-ostree-0:2024.3-3.el9_4
  • rpm-ostree-0:2023.3-2.el9_2
  • RHBA-2025:4872
  • RHSA-2024:3823
  • RHSA-2024:3401

Confirm against the vendor advisory before you patch.

Affected versions

No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative. Check it before change work.

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 3 days ago·verify at source

Fixed versions
  • rpm-ostree-0:2025.5-1.el10
  • rpm-ostree-0:2024.3-3.el9_4
  • rpm-ostree-0:2023.3-2.el9_2
  • RHBA-2025:4872
  • RHSA-2024:3823
  • RHSA-2024:3401

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 3 days ago·verify at source

Mitigation checklist

Recommended fix / mitigation
  • If you need to apply the fix immediately, you can run the following commands, using credentials that have administrator access to an OpenShift cluster: # List current permissions for all nodes for node in $( oc get nodes -oname) ; do echo $node ; oc debug $node -- bash -c "ls -alhZ /host/etc/*shadow*"; done # Set correct permissions for node in $( oc get nodes -oname) ; do echo $node ; oc debug $node -- chmod --verbose 0000 /host/etc/shadow /host/etc/gshadow /host/etc/shadow- /host/etc/gshadow-; done As a precaution, we recommend rotating all user credentials stored in those files.

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 3 days ago·verify at source

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