CVE-2019-15790 LOW

CVE-2019-15790: Apport reads PID files with elevated privileges

Vendor Canonical
Product Apport
Weakness CWE-250
Published April 27, 2020
Last update November 3, 2025

CVSS base score

2.8/10
Attack vector Local
Attack complexity High
Privileges required Low
User interaction None
Confidentiality Low
Integrity None

CVSS vector

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

What the vulnerability does

01Description

Apport reads and writes information on a crashed process to /proc/pid with elevated privileges. Apport then determines which user the crashed process belongs to by reading /proc/pid through get_pid_info() in data/apport. An unprivileged user could exploit this to read information about a privileged running process by exploiting PID recycling. This information could then be used to obtain ASLR offsets for a process with an existing memory corruption vulnerability. The initial fix introduced regressions in the Python Apport library due to a missing argument in Report.add_proc_environ in apport/report.py. It also caused an autopkgtest failure when reading /proc/pid and with Python 2 compatibility by reading /proc maps. The initial and subsequent regression fixes are in 2.20.11-0ubuntu16, 2.20.11-0ubuntu8.6, 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.12, 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.22 and 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.29+esm3.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

April 27, 2020 CVE published
November 3, 2025 Record updated