CVE-2017-14159

Publication date 5 September 2017

Last updated 25 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

slapd in OpenLDAP 2.4.45 and earlier creates a PID file after dropping privileges to a non-root account, which might allow local users to kill arbitrary processes by leveraging access to this non-root account for PID file modification before a root script executes a "kill `cat /pathname`" command, as demonstrated by openldap-initscript.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
openldap	20.10 groovy	Not affected
	20.04 LTS focal	Not affected
	19.10 eoan	Ignored end of life
	19.04 disco	Ignored end of life
	18.10 cosmic	Ignored end of life
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not affected
	17.10 artful	Ignored end of life
	17.04 zesty	Ignored end of life
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not affected
	14.04 LTS trusty	Not affected

Notes

mdeslaur

per upstream bug, upstream doesn't consider this to be a security issue. Marking as not-affected.

Severity score breakdown

CVSS version: CVSS v3.0

Base score 4.7 · Medium

Base metrics

Parameter	Value
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	High
Privileges required	Low
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality impact	None
Integrity impact	None
Availability impact	High

Scores

Parameter	Value
Base score	4.7 · Medium
Exploitability score	-
Impact score	-

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References

Other references

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2017-14159