Detections
Analytics
Amazon Linux 2023 : ecs-init (ALAS2023-2025-886)
low Nessus Plugin ID 232286
Synopsis
The remote Amazon Linux 2023 host is missing a security update.Description
It is, therefore, affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the ALAS2023-2025-886 advisory.runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers according to the OCI specification. runc 1.1.13 and earlier, as well as 1.2.0-rc2 and earlier, can be tricked into creating empty files or directories in arbitrary locations in the host filesystem by sharing a volume between two containers and exploiting a race with `os.MkdirAll`. While this could be used to create empty files, existing files would not be truncated. An attacker must have the ability to start containers using some kind of custom volume configuration. Containers using user namespaces are still affected, but the scope of places an attacker can create inodes can be significantly reduced. Sufficiently strict LSM policies (SELinux/Apparmor) can also in principle block this attack -- we suspect the industry standard SELinux policy may restrict this attack's scope but the exact scope of protection hasn't been analysed. This is exploitable using runc directly as well as through Docker and Kubernetes. The issue is fixed in runc v1.1.14 and v1.2.0-rc3.
Some workarounds are available. Using user namespaces restricts this attack fairly significantly such that the attacker can only create inodes in directories that the remapped root user/group has write access to.
Unless the root user is remapped to an actualuser on the host (such as with rootless containers that don't use `/etc/sub[ug]id`), this in practice means that an attacker would only be able to create inodes in world-writable directories. A strict enough SELinux or AppArmor policy could in principle also restrict the scope if a specific label is applied to the runc runtime, though neither the extent to which the standard existing policies block this attack nor what exact policies are needed to sufficiently restrict this attack have been thoroughly tested. (CVE-2024-45310)
Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the tested product security advisory.
Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.
Solution
Run 'dnf update ecs-init --releasever 2023.6.20250303' to update your system.See Also
https://alas.aws.amazon.com/AL2023/ALAS-2025-886.html
Plugin Details
Severity: Low
ID: 232286
File Name: al2023_ALAS2023-2025-886.nasl
Version: 1.1
Type: local
Agent: unix
Published: 3/7/2025
Updated: 3/7/2025
Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Continuous Assessment, Nessus
Risk Information
VPR
Risk Factor: Low
Score: 2.4
CVSS v2
Risk Factor: Low
Base Score: 2.1
Temporal Score: 1.6
Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N
CVSS Score Source: CVE-2024-45310
CVSS v3
Risk Factor: Low
Base Score: 3.6
Temporal Score: 3.2
Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N
Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C
Vulnerability Information
CPE: p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:ecs-init, cpe:/o:amazon:linux:2023
Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/AmazonLinux/release, Host/AmazonLinux/rpm-list
Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available
Patch Publication Date: 2/27/2025
Vulnerability Publication Date: 9/3/2024
Reference Information
CVE: CVE-2024-45310