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Fencer Intel
critical 9.8

CVE-2017-12424 json

In shadow before 4.5, the newusers tool could be made to manipulate internal data structures in ways unintended by the authors.

published 2017-08-04 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2017-3997

cvss
9.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.7%
EPSS 2.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 85%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In shadow before 4.5, the newusers tool could be made to manipulate internal data structures in ways unintended by the authors. Malformed input may lead to crashes (with a buffer overflow or other memory corruption) or other unspecified behaviors. This crosses a privilege boundary in, for example, certain web-hosting environments in which a Control Panel allows an unprivileged user account to create subaccounts.

Patch / fix

  • shadow_project shadow 4.5
  • shadow Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1:4.5-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-12424

  • shadow Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS 1:4.1.5.1-1ubuntu9.5+esm1
  • shadow Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 1:4.2-3.1ubuntu5.5+esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2017-12424

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • shadow SLES for SAP 12 SP3, SLES for SAP 12 SP2, SLES for Raspberry Pi 12 SP2 +4 more 4.2.1-27.3.3

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2017:2947-1

  • shadow Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +15 more 4.5-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2017-12424

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2017-12424 updated cvss 4.5

shadow-utils: Buffer overflow via newusers tool

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 shadow-utils Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 shadow-utils Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 shadow-utils
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

2.66% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 85% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.