The Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) is a widely used printing system on Unix-like operating systems, but recent vulnerabilities have exposed significant risks. The most critical is CVE-2024-47176, which affects the cups-browsed service by binding to the IP address INADDR_ANY:631. This configuration flaw causes it to trust all incoming packets, leading to potential remote code execution when interacting with malicious printers. This vulnerability is part of a chain of exploits, including.

CVE-2023-2163 is a critical vulnerability in the Linux Kernel, specifically affecting kernel versions 5.4 and above (excluding 6.3). This vulnerability arises from incorrect verifier pruning in the Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF), leading to unsafe code paths being incorrectly marked as safe. The vulnerability has a CVSS v3.1 Base Score of 8.8, indicating its high severity. The consequences are arbitrary read/write in kernel memory, lateral privilege escalation and container escape.

The Common Unix Printing System (CUPS), a standard component in nearly every Unix-like and Linux system, has recently come under scrutiny due to a series of critical vulnerabilities discovered by security researcher Simone Margaritelli. These issues, collectively known as the CUPS vulnerability, expose Linux and Unix environments to potential remote code execution and information disclosure risks.

A new series of vulnerabilities in the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) threatens numerous Linux systems, potentially allowing remote code execution (RCE). This affects a wide range of platforms, including Debian, Red Hat, SUSE and macOS. The vulnerabilities—tracked as CVE-2024-47176, CVE-2024-47076, CVE-2024-47175, and CVE-2024-47177—are believed to endanger over 76,000 devices, with estimates suggesting up to 300,000 could be affected.

On September 26, 2024, security researcher Simone Margaritellidisclosed the details of four OpenPrinting Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) vulnerabilities, that, when chained together, can allow malicious actors to launch remote code execution (RCE) attacks on vulnerable systems. CUPS is a widely used, open-source printing system that supports Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It also supports ChromeOS and macOS.

With the recent release of Ubuntu 24.04, we at Snyk Security Labs thought it would be interesting to examine the latest version of this Linux distribution to see if we could find any interesting privilege escalation vulnerabilities. I’ll let the results speak for themselves: During our research, we successfully identified a privilege escalation from the default user on a fresh Ubuntu Desktop installation to root.