Description
pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary removable media. In versions 0.9.1 and below, pusb_is_loginctl_local() can cause a NULL dereference crash when parsing loginctl output. The function calls popen() and reads the result; if the Remote field is only a newline, fgets() succeeds but strtok_r(buf, "\n", &saveptr) returns NULL. A subsequent strcmp(is_remote, "no") then dereferences NULL, causing undefined behavior (typically SIGSEGV) and crashing the PAM module. This can crash the authenticating process (e.g., sudo, login) and, depending on PAM stack configuration, deny access for all users of the affected service. This issue has been fixed in version 0.9.2.
CVSS breakdown
CVSS 3.1
Attack Vector
Local
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
Low
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Affected products
- mcdope / pam_usb< 0.9.2 – < 0.9.2