CVE-2017-16997

Publication date 17 December 2017

Last updated 25 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

elf/dl-load.c in the GNU C Library (aka glibc or libc6) 2.19 through 2.26 mishandles RPATH and RUNPATH containing $ORIGIN for a privileged (setuid or AT_SECURE) program, which allows local users to gain privileges via a Trojan horse library in the current working directory, related to the fillin_rpath and decompose_rpath functions. This is associated with misinterpretion of an empty RPATH/RUNPATH token as the "./" directory. NOTE: this configuration of RPATH/RUNPATH for a privileged program is apparently very uncommon; most likely, no such program is shipped with any common Linux distribution.

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
eglibc	21.04 hirsute	Not in release
	20.10 groovy	Not in release
	20.04 LTS focal	Not in release
	19.10 eoan	Not in release
	19.04 disco	Not in release
	18.10 cosmic	Not in release
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not in release
	17.10 artful	Not in release
	17.04 zesty	Not in release
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not in release
	14.04 LTS trusty	Fixed 2.19-0ubuntu6.14
glibc	21.04 hirsute	Not affected
	20.10 groovy	Not affected
	20.04 LTS focal	Not affected
	19.10 eoan	Not affected
	19.04 disco	Not affected
	18.10 cosmic	Not affected
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not affected
	17.10 artful	Fixed 2.26-0ubuntu2.1
	17.04 zesty	Ignored end of life
	16.04 LTS xenial	Fixed 2.23-0ubuntu10
	14.04 LTS trusty	Not in release

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
glibc	Upstream: https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git;h=3e3c904daef69b8bf7d5cc07f793c9f07c3553ef Upstream: https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git;h=4ebd0c4191c6073cc8a7c5fdcf1d182c4719bcbb Upstream: https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git;h=f24c345bf5486cc8d659f7a17463adcae402ec8e

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	7.8 · High
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	None
User interaction	Required
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	High
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	High
Vector	CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

References

Related Ubuntu Security Notices (USN)

USN-3534-1
GNU C Library vulnerabilities
17 January 2018