needrestart 0.8 through 3.5 before 3.6 is prone to local privilege escalation. Regexes to detect the Perl, Python, and Ruby interpreters are not anchored, allowing a local user to escalate privileges when needrestart tries to detect if interpreters are using old source files.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2022-30688 is rated Moderate Risk (40.2/100): CVSS High severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.09%). Mandatory action: Review affected assets and schedule remediation.
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 | 2025-12-29 | 0.21% | 0.09% | -0.12% |
| 2 | 2025-12-28 | 0.06% | 0.21% | +0.15% |
| 3 | 2025-11-21 | — | 0.06% | — |
Full EPSS history (9 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.8 | 3.1 | HIGH |
|
1.8 | 5.9 | [email protected] |
| 4.6 | 2.0 | MEDIUM |
|
3.9 | 6.4 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
not yet assigned | CVE-2022-30688 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (needrestart), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2022-30688 |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2022-30688 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (needrestart), 13 status rows across 13 suites (bionic, focal, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, upstream, xenial): not-affected 7, released 5, needed 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2022-30688 |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| needrestart_project | needrestart | >= 0.8, < 3.6 | cpe:2.3:a:needrestart_project:needrestart:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | debian_linux | 9.0 | cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:9.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | debian_linux | 10.0 | cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:10.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | debian_linux | 11.0 | cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:11.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2022/05/17/9 | Mailing List Third Party Advisory |
| https://github.com/liske/needrestart/commit/e6e58136e1e3c92296e2e810cb8372a5fe0dbd30 | Patch Third Party Advisory |
| https://github.com/liske/needrestart/releases/tag/v3.6 | Release Notes Third Party Advisory |
| https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/05/msg00024.html | Mailing List Third Party Advisory |
| https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2022/msg00105.html | Mailing List Third Party Advisory |
| https://www.debian.org/security/2022/dsa-5137 | Third Party Advisory |
| https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2022/05/17/9 | Mailing List Third Party Advisory |
| http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2024/Nov/15 | |
| http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2024/Nov/17 |