Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2020-8903

high Nessus Plugin ID 262990

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Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

- A vulnerability in Google Cloud Platform's guest-oslogin versions between 20190304 and 20200507 allows a user that is only granted the role roles/compute.osLogin to escalate privileges to root. Using their membership to the adm group, users with this role are able to read the DHCP XID from the systemd journal. Using the DHCP XID, it is then possible to set the IP address and hostname of the instance to any value, which is then stored in /etc/hosts. An attacker can then point metadata.google.internal to an arbitrary IP address and impersonate the GCE metadata server which make it is possible to instruct the OS Login PAM module to grant administrative privileges. All images created after 2020-May-07 (20200507) are fixed, and if you cannot update, we recommend you edit /etc/group/security.conf and remove the adm user from the OS Login entry. (CVE-2020-8903)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 262990

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2020_8903.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 9/10/2025

Updated: 9/10/2025

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.9

Temporal Score: 5.4

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2020-8903

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 7

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:gce-compute-image-packages, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:14.04:-:lts

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, global_settings/vendor_unpatched, Host/OS/identifier

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 6/22/2020

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2020-8903

Detections

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