CVE-2025-6018 (GCVE-0-2025-6018)
Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2025-07-23 14:58 – Updated: 2026-06-30 10:40
VLAI
EPSS
VEX
Title
Pam-config: lpe from unprivileged to allow_active in pam
Summary
A Local Privilege Escalation (LPE) vulnerability has been discovered in pam-config within Linux Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM). This flaw allows an unprivileged local attacker (for example, a user logged in via SSH) to obtain the elevated privileges normally reserved for a physically present, "allow_active" user. The highest risk is that the attacker can then perform all allow_active yes Polkit actions, which are typically restricted to console users, potentially gaining unauthorized control over system configurations, services, or other sensitive operations.
Severity
7.8 (High)
SSVC
Exploitation: poc
Automatable: no
Technical Impact: total
CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)
Decision recorded 2025-07-23 15:12 UTC
CWE
- CWE-863 - Incorrect Authorization
Assigner
References
5 references
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-6018 | vdb-entryx_refsource_REDHAT |
| https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2372693 | issue-trackingx_refsource_REDHAT |
| https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1243226 | |
| https://cdn2.qualys.com/2025/06/17/suse15-pam-udi… | |
| http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/08/28/4 |
Impacted products
4 products
| Vendor | Product | Version | CPE status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Affected:
0 , < 1.1.8-24.71.1
(custom)
|
||||
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 |
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7
|
||
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 |
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8
|
||
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 |
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:9
|
Date Public
2025-06-17 00:00
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Experimental. This forecast is provided for visualization only and may change without notice. Do not use it for operational decisions.
Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.
Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
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The MITRE ATT&CK techniques below are AI-generated suggestions, inferred from the description of the
vulnerability by the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-classification-roberta-base
model, served locally by ML-Gateway.
They have not been verified by an analyst and are provided for guidance only.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
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Related by attack behaviour
Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.
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