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Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2024-48991 json

Qualys discovered that needrestart, before version 3.8, allows local attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by winning a race conditio…

published last yr. modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2024-43194

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
6.1%
EPSS 6.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 93%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Qualys discovered that needrestart, before version 3.8, allows local attackers to execute arbitrary code as root by winning a race condition and tricking needrestart into running their own, fake Python interpreter (instead of the system's real Python interpreter). The initial security fix (6ce6136) introduced a regression which was subsequently resolved (42af5d3).

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-2024-48991

  • 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-2024-48991

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

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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-2024-48991 updated

needrestart: arbitrary code execution via race condition

  • 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

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
last yr.

Exploit prediction

6.07% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 93% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

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-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization

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.