CVE-2024-48990

Publication date 19 November 2024

Last updated 26 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

Qualys discovered that needrestart, before version 3.8, allows local attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by tricking needrestart into running the Python interpreter with an attacker-controlled PYTHONPATH environment variable.

Why is this CVE high priority?

Local privilege escalation

Learn more about Ubuntu priority

Mitigation

Edit /etc/needrestart/needrestart.conf so that the following line appears after "# Disable interpreter scanners." and reboot: $nrconf{interpscan} = 0;

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
needrestart	25.04 plucky	Fixed 3.6-8ubuntu6
	24.10 oracular	Fixed 3.6-8ubuntu4.2
	24.04 LTS noble	Fixed 3.6-7ubuntu4.3
	22.04 LTS jammy	Fixed 3.5-5ubuntu2.2
	20.04 LTS focal	Fixed 3.4-6ubuntu0.1+esm1
	18.04 LTS bionic	Fixed 3.1-1ubuntu0.1+esm1
	16.04 LTS xenial	Fixed 2.6-1ubuntu0.1~esm1

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Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
needrestart	Upstream: fcc9a44

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	7.8 · High
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	Low
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	High
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	High
Vector	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

References

Related Ubuntu Security Notices (USN)

USN-7117-1
needrestart and Module::ScanDeps vulnerabilities
19 November 2024