CVE-2010-4664 – CVE-2010-4664 is a privilege escalation vulnera... (How to Fix)

Q: What is the severity of CVE-2010-4664?

CVE-2010-4664 has a CVSS score of 8.8 (HIGH). CVE-2010-4664 is a privilege escalation vulnerability in ConsoleKit versions before 0.4.2 that allows authenticated local users to bypass security restrictions and gain elevated privileges by initiating a remote VNC session. This affects Linux systems using ConsoleKit for session management, particularly those with VNC services enabled. The vulnerability requires local system access but can lead to full system compromise.

📋 TL;DR

CVE-2010-4664 is a privilege escalation vulnerability in ConsoleKit versions before 0.4.2 that allows authenticated local users to bypass security restrictions and gain elevated privileges by initiating a remote VNC session. This affects Linux systems using ConsoleKit for session management, particularly those with VNC services enabled. The vulnerability requires local system access but can lead to full system compromise.

💻 Affected Systems

Products:

ConsoleKit

Versions: Versions before 0.4.2

Operating Systems: Linux distributions using ConsoleKit (primarily older versions of Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian)

Default Config Vulnerable: ⚠️ Yes

Notes: Systems must have ConsoleKit installed and VNC services available. Modern systems have largely migrated to systemd-logind, reducing exposure.

📦 What is this software?

⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact

🔴

Worst Case

An authenticated attacker gains root privileges, leading to complete system compromise, data theft, and persistent backdoor installation.

🟠

Likely Case

Local users escalate to administrative privileges, allowing them to modify system configurations, access sensitive data, or install malicious software.

🟢

If Mitigated

With proper access controls and patching, the attack surface is limited to authorized users who already have some system access.

🌐 Internet-Facing: LOW - This is primarily a local privilege escalation vulnerability requiring authenticated access to the system.

🏢 Internal Only: HIGH - Internal users with legitimate system accounts can exploit this to gain administrative privileges.

🎯 Exploit Status

Public PoC: ⚠️ Yes

Weaponized: LIKELY

Unauthenticated Exploit: ✅ No

Complexity: LOW

Exploitation requires local authenticated access. The vulnerability is well-documented and relatively straightforward to exploit for users with basic Linux knowledge.

🛠️ Fix & Mitigation

✅ Official Fix

Patch Version: ConsoleKit 0.4.2 and later

Vendor Advisory: https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2010-4664

Restart Required: Yes

Instructions:

1. Update ConsoleKit to version 0.4.2 or later using your distribution's package manager. 2. For RHEL/CentOS: 'yum update consolekit'. 3. For Debian/Ubuntu: 'apt-get update && apt-get install consolekit'. 4. Restart affected services or reboot the system.

🔧 Temporary Workarounds

Disable VNC services

linux

Remove or disable VNC server services to eliminate the attack vector

systemctl stop vncserver
systemctl disable vncserver
apt-get remove tightvncserver
yum remove tigervnc-server

Restrict ConsoleKit permissions

linux

Modify ConsoleKit configuration to restrict session management capabilities

chmod 644 /etc/ConsoleKit/*
setfacl -m u:consolekit:r-x /usr/bin/vncserver

🧯 If You Can't Patch

Implement strict access controls and limit local user accounts to trusted personnel only
Monitor for privilege escalation attempts and review system logs regularly for VNC session anomalies

🔍 How to Verify

Check if Vulnerable:

Check ConsoleKit version: 'console-kit-daemon --version' or 'rpm -q consolekit' or 'dpkg -l consolekit'

Check Version:

console-kit-daemon --version 2>/dev/null || rpm -q consolekit 2>/dev/null || dpkg -l consolekit 2>/dev/null | grep ^ii

Verify Fix Applied:

Verify ConsoleKit version is 0.4.2 or higher: 'console-kit-daemon --version | grep -q "0.4.[2-9]\|0.[5-9]" && echo "Patched"'

📡 Detection & Monitoring

Log Indicators:

Unexpected VNC session initiation by non-privileged users
ConsoleKit authentication failures followed by successful VNC connections
Privilege escalation attempts in system logs

Network Indicators:

Unexpected VNC traffic from internal hosts
VNC connections originating from non-standard or unexpected user accounts

SIEM Query:

source="systemd" AND "vnc" AND "session" AND (user!="root" OR user!="admin")

📊 Metadata

CVE ID: CVE-2010-4664

CVSS v3 Score: 8.8 (HIGH)

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CWE: CWE-269

Published: November 13, 2019

Last Updated: November 21, 2024

🔗 References

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2010-4664 Third Party Advisory
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2010-4664 Issue Tracking,Third Party Advisory
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2010-4664 Third Party Advisory
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2010-4664 Third Party Advisory
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2010-4664 Issue Tracking,Third Party Advisory
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2010-4664 Third Party Advisory

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🔗 Related Vulnerabilities

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