Skip to content
Fencer Intel
medium 4.4

CVE-2018-1063 json

Context relabeling of filesystems is vulnerable to symbolic link attack, allowing a local, unprivileged malicious entity to change the SELi…

published 2018-03-02 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-11716

cvss
4.4
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 34%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Context relabeling of filesystems is vulnerable to symbolic link attack, allowing a local, unprivileged malicious entity to change the SELinux context of an arbitrary file to a context with few restrictions. This only happens when the relabeling process is done, usually when taking SELinux state from disabled to enable (permissive or enforcing). The issue was found in policycoreutils 2.5-11.

Patch / fix

  • policycoreutils Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.7-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-1063

  • policycoreutils RHEL 7 2.5-22.el7
  • policycoreutils-gui RHEL 7 2.5-22.el7
  • policycoreutils-python RHEL 7 2.5-22.el7
  • policycoreutils-newrole RHEL 7 2.5-22.el7
  • policycoreutils-sandbox RHEL 7 2.5-22.el7
  • policycoreutils-restorecond RHEL 7 2.5-22.el7

red hat advisories RHSA-2018:0913

  • policycoreutils SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4 2.0.79-4.9.3.3
  • policycoreutils SLES for SAP 12 SP3, SLES for SAP 12 SP2, SLES for Raspberry Pi 12 SP2 +2 more 2.5-10.3.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2018:0927-1SUSE-SU-2018:0926-1

  • coreutils openSUSE Tumbleweed 3.2-1.4

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:11179-1

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-2018-1063 updated cvss 3.9

policycoreutils: Relabelling of symbolic links in /tmp and /var/tmp change the context of their target instead

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 policycoreutils, policycoreutils-gui, policycoreutils-python, policycoreutils-newrole, policycoreutils-sandbox
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Remove any symbolic links from /tmp and /var/tmp directories before relabeling the file system.”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client (v. 7) policycoreutils 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-gui 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-python 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-newrole 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-sandbox 2.5-22.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client Optional (v. 7) policycoreutils-restorecond 2.5-22.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode (v. 7) policycoreutils 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-python 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-newrole 2.5-22.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode Optional (v. 7) policycoreutils-gui 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-sandbox 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-restorecond 2.5-22.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM and IBM Power LE (POWER9) Server (v. 7) policycoreutils 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-gui 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-python 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-newrole 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-sandbox 2.5-22.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM and IBM Power LE (POWER9) Server Optional (v. 7) policycoreutils-restorecond 2.5-22.el7
    +4 more products
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 7) policycoreutils 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-gui 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-python 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-newrole 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-sandbox 2.5-22.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 7) policycoreutils-restorecond 2.5-22.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 7) policycoreutils 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-gui 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-python 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-newrole 2.5-22.el7, policycoreutils-sandbox 2.5-22.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 7) policycoreutils-restorecond 2.5-22.el7
    fixed: vendor fix “Remove any symbolic links from /tmp and /var/tmp directories before relabeling the file system.” RHSA-2018:0913
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 policycoreutils Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 policycoreutils, policycoreutils-gui, policycoreutils-dbus, policycoreutils-newrole, policycoreutils-sandbox, python3-policycoreutils, +2 more
    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

0.40% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 34% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 4.4 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
NVD 2.0 3.3 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:N

Affected products

  • SELinux Project policycoreutils

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access

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.