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Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2024-48990 in the critical feed json

Qualys discovered that needrestart, before version 3.8, allows local attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by tricking needrestart in…

published last yr. modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2024-43193

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
29.2%
EPSS 29.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 98%
public exploits
1
Metasploit

Summary

Qualys discovered that needrestart, before version 3.8, allows local attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by tricking needrestart into running the Python interpreter with an attacker-controlled PYTHONPATH environment variable.

Patch / fix

  • needrestart needrestart 3.8
  • needrestart_project needrestart 3.8
  • needrestart Debian 12 3.6-4+deb12u2
  • needrestart Debian 14, Debian 13 3.7-3.1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2024-48990

  • needrestart Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 3.5-5ubuntu2.2
  • needrestart Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 3.6-7ubuntu4.3
  • needrestart Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 2.6-1ubuntu0.1~esm1
  • needrestart Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS 3.1-1ubuntu0.1+esm1
  • needrestart Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS 3.4-6ubuntu0.1+esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2024-48990

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

Is CVE-2024-48990 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-2024-48990 updated

needrestart: arbitrary code execution via PYTHONPATH environment variable

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    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 exploit/linux/local/ubuntu_needrestart_lpe)
  2. Published

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
last yr.

Exploit prediction

29.20% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 98% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Exploits and checks

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • needrestart needrestart
  • needrestart_project needrestart

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-427 Uncontrolled Search Path Element

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.