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CVE-2016-8641

A privilege escalation vulnerability was found in nagios 4.2.x that occurs in daemon-init.in when creating necessary files and insecurely changing the ownership afterwards. It's possible for the local attacker to create symbolic links before the files are to be created and possibly escalating the privileges with the ownership change.

Security Impact Summary

This vulnerability carries a MEDIUM severity rating with a CVSS v3.1 score of 6.7, requiring local system access to exploit but requires specific conditions to be met though user interaction is required requiring only low-level privileges . The vulnerability impacts confidentiality (data exposure), integrity (unauthorized modifications), and availability (service disruption) for affected systems. Impacting 1 product from nagios organizations running these solutions should prioritize assessment and patching.

Historical Context

First disclosed in 2018, this vulnerability was reported during a period defined by widespread IoT adoption challenges, mobile security concerns, and the emergence of advanced persistent threat (APT) techniques. Contemporary mitigation strategies focused on secure development practices and third-party component vetting.

Published

2018-08-01T14:29:00.253

Last Modified

2024-11-21T02:59:44.760

Status

Modified

Source

[email protected]

Severity

CVSSv3.0: 6.7 (MEDIUM)

CVSSv2 Vector

AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Access Vector: LOCAL
Access Complexity: LOW
Authentication: NONE
Confidentiality Impact: COMPLETE
Integrity Impact: COMPLETE
Availability Impact: COMPLETE

Exploitability Score

3.9

Impact Score

10.0

Weaknesses

Type: Secondary
CWE-59
Type: Secondary
CWE-59

Affected Vendors & Products

Type	Vendor	Product	Version/Range	Vulnerable?
Application	nagios	nagios	4.2.0	Yes
Application	nagios	nagios	4.2.1	Yes
Application	nagios	nagios	4.2.2	Yes
Application	nagios	nagios	4.2.3	Yes

References

http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/95121 Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry ([email protected])
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2016-8641 Issue Tracking, Patch, Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://github.com/NagiosEnterprises/nagioscore/commit/f2ed227673d3b2da643eb5cad26b2d87674f28c1.patch Patch, Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201702-26 Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/40774/ Exploit, Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry ([email protected])
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/95121 Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2016-8641 Issue Tracking, Patch, Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://github.com/NagiosEnterprises/nagioscore/commit/f2ed227673d3b2da643eb5cad26b2d87674f28c1.patch Patch, Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201702-26 Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/40774/ Exploit, Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)

How SecUtils Interprets This CVE

SecUtils normalizes and enriches National Vulnerability Database (NVD) records by standardizing vendor and product identifiers, aggregating vulnerability metadata from both NVD and MITRE sources, and providing structured context for security teams. For nagios's affected products, we extract Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) data, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) classifications, CVSS severity metrics, and reference data to enable rapid vulnerability prioritization and asset correlation. This record contains no exploit code, proof-of-concept instructions, or attack methodologies—only defensive intelligence necessary for patch management, risk assessment, and security operations.