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Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2018-20781 json

In pam/gkr-pam-module.c in GNOME Keyring before 3.27.2, the user's password is kept in a session-child process spawned from the LightDM dae…

published 7y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2018-13324

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.5%
EPSS 1.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 75%
public exploits
1
Metasploit

Summary

In pam/gkr-pam-module.c in GNOME Keyring before 3.27.2, the user's password is kept in a session-child process spawned from the LightDM daemon. This can expose the credential in cleartext.

Patch / fix

  • gnome gnome_keyring 3.27.2
  • gnome-keyring Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 3.28.0-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-20781

  • gnome-keyring Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.10.1-1ubuntu4.4
  • gnome-keyring Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 3.18.3-0ubuntu2.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-20781

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

  • gnome-keyring Arch Linux 3.27.2-1

arch linux advisories AVG-932

Is CVE-2018-20781 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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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-2018-20781 updated cvss 4.4

gnome-keyring: user's login credentials is kept in a session-child process resulting in exposed plaintext password

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 gnome-keyring, gnome-keyring-pam Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 gnome-keyring, gnome-keyring-pam
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 libgnome-keyring Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 gnome-keyring, gnome-keyring-pam
    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

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (Metasploit post/linux/gather/mimipenguin)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

1.54% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 75% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 2.1 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-522 Insufficiently Protected Credentials

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.