Apport does not properly handle crashes originating from a PID namespace allowing local users to create certain files as root which an attacker could leverage to perform a denial of service via resource exhaustion, possibly gain root privileges, or escape from containers. The is_same_ns() function returns True when /proc/<global pid>/ does not exist in order to indicate that the crash should be handled in the global namespace rather than inside of a container. However, the portion of the data/apport code that decides whether or not to forward a crash to a container does not always replace sys.argv[1] with the value stored in the host_pid variable when /proc/<global pid>/ does not exist which results in the container pid being used in the global namespace. This flaw affects versions 2.20.8-0ubuntu4 through 2.20.9-0ubuntu7, 2.20.7-0ubuntu3.7, 2.20.7-0ubuntu3.8, 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.15 through 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.17, and 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.28.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2018-6552 is rated Low Risk (32.3/100): CVSS High severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.04%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).
| # | Date | Old EPSS score | New EPSS score | Delta (New - Old) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2023-03-07 | 0.89% | 0.04% | -0.84% |
| 2 | 2022-02-04 | 0.41% | 0.89% | +0.47% |
| 3 | 2021-04-14 | — | 0.41% | — |
Full EPSS history (3 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.8 | 3.0 | HIGH |
|
1.8 | 5.9 | [email protected] |
| 7.2 | 2.0 | HIGH |
|
3.9 | 10.0 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
ubuntu
|
high | CVE-2018-6552 high priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (apport), 5 status rows across 5 suites (artful, bionic, trusty, upstream, xenial): released 4, needs-triage 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2018-6552 |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| apport_project | apport | 2.14.1 | cpe:2.3:a:apport_project:apport:2.14.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| apport_project | apport | 2.20.9 | cpe:2.3:a:apport_project:apport:2.20.9:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| apport_project | apport | 2.20.7 | cpe:2.3:a:apport_project:apport:2.20.7:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| apport_project | apport | 2.20.1 | cpe:2.3:a:apport_project:apport:2.20.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://usn.ubuntu.com/3664-2/ | Vendor Advisory |
| https://usn.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-3664-1 | Vendor Advisory |