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Fencer Vulns
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 2024-11-19 23 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2024-43193

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
21.3%
EPSS 21.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 97%
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

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
23 mo ago

Exploit prediction

21.27% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 97% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

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 Vulns 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.