CVE-2007-3048

unknown
Published — · Modified —
CVSS v3
CVSS v4 NEW
not yet in upstream
VIR risk
1.0

Description

GNU screen 4.0.3 allows local users to unlock the screen via a CTRL-C sequence at the password prompt. NOTE: multiple third parties report inability to reproduce this issue

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
20%
Patch ETA

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

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Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-4028 local linux verified text · 2 KB
Rembrandt · 2008-06-18

Screen 4.0.3 (OpenBSD) - Local Authentication Bypass

text exploit Source: Exploit-DB
                     _   _ _____ _     ___ _____ _   _
                   / / / / ____/ /   /  _/_  __/ / / /
                  / /_/ / __/ / /    / /  / / / /_/ /
                 / __  / /___/ /____/ /  / / / __  /
                /_/ /_/_____/_____/___/ /_/ /_/ /_/
                           Helith - 0815
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author		 : Rembrandt
Date		 : 2007-06-03
Affected Software: screen <= 4.0.3
Affected OS	 : OpenBSD up to 4.4 (and propably others)
Type		 : Local Authentication Bypass

OSVDB		 : 39587
Milw0rm		 : 4028
CVE		 : 2007-3048
ISS X-Force:	 : 34693

screen, on some operating systems, is vulnerable to a local terminal screen 
lock authentication bypass that may allow physically proximate attackers to 
gain access to the system.

This issue has been confirmed on OpenBSD with screen 4.0.3 on x86/amd64.
The underlying vulnerability may be related to 3rd party authentication such
as PAM. This issue was tested on OpenSuSE with screen 4.0.2 and was not
vulnerable.


Steps to reproduce:

$ screen -S test
[Screened session starts]
$ id
uid=1001(test) gid=1001(test) groups=1001(test)
$ 
[type  ctrl-a x]
Key:  test
Again:  test
Screen used by test <test>.
Password:
[type  ctrl-c]
$ screen -r
[Regained access to screen, without password]

The screen lock mechanism is designed to lock a terminal, not the entire shell 
session. If an attacker has shell access to the target account, it is understood
they can bypass protection. However, on the system tested, the screen lock
mechanism was bypassed using 'ctrl-c'.

The vulnerability is not in OpenBSD. screen developers indicate this is known
behavior, but do not appear to fully understand the scenario with which 
this can be abused. Replies to my initial disclosure suggest this may be
related to PAM authentication, or another 3rd party package. Testing was
not performed to fully identify the vulnerable code.

Tobias Ulmer has committed a patch to the screen code that prevents
this exploit from happening.


Kind regards,
Rembrandt

# milw0rm.com [2008-06-18]

OS impact

debian Debian Fixed 5 releases
VersionStatusFixed in
trixie Fixed 0
sid Fixed 0
forky Fixed 0
bullseye Fixed 0
bookworm Fixed 0

References

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.