In Shadow 4.13, it is possible to inject control characters into fields provided to the SUID program chfn (change finger). Although it is not possible to exploit this directly (e.g., adding a new use…
Low CVSS 3.3
Summary
In Shadow 4.13, it is possible to inject control characters into fields provided to the SUID program chfn (change finger). Although it is not possible to exploit this directly (e.g., adding a new user fails because \n is in the block list), it is possible to misrepresent the /etc/passwd file when viewed. Use of \r manipulations and Unicode characters to work around blocking of the : character make it possible to give the impression that a new user has been added. In other words, an adversary ma…
In-depth triage
No in-depth report has been generated yet (DR-003 v2 AI pipeline is under construction).
Affected products
- :
Sources
- NVD DATABASE
Original Links
- https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow/commit/e5905c4b84d4fb90aefcd96ee618411ebfac663d Patch
- https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow/pull/687 Issue Tracking
- https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/resources/blogs/spiderlabs-blog/cve-2023-29383-abusing-linux-chfn-to-misrepresent-etc-passwd/ Exploit
- https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/resources/security-resources/security-advisories/?fid=31797 Exploit
- https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow/commit/e5905c4b84d4fb90aefcd96ee618411ebfac663d Patch
- https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow/pull/687 Issue Tracking
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/04/msg00026.html
- https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/resources/blogs/spiderlabs-blog/cve-2023-29383-abusing-linux-chfn-to-misrepresent-etc-passwd/ Exploit
- https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/resources/security-resources/security-advisories/?fid=31797 Exploit
- https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-202008.html
- https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-398330.html
Timeline
- nvd_ingest NVD