Local password disclosure via uncleared confirmation buffer
Published Dec 27, 2023 · Updated Nov 3, 2025
Information disclosure in shadow-utils before 4.14.0 allows local users to recover a group password after a failed confirmation prompt. In gpasswd's change_passwd function, a failed second agetpass call exits without clearing the first entry copied by STRFCPY into the static pass buffer. Reading the residual plaintext requires privileged process-memory access or control of the same process, and upstream analysis describes exploitation as difficult.
Summary
What happened
Information disclosure in shadow-utils before 4.14.0 allows local users to recover a group password after a failed confirmation prompt. In gpasswd's change_passwd function, a failed second agetpass call exits without clearing the first entry copied by STRFCPY into the static pass buffer. Reading the residual plaintext requires privileged process-memory access or control of the same process, and upstream analysis describes exploitation as difficult.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-4641
- Published
- Dec 27, 2023
- Updated
- Nov 3, 2025
- Vendor
- Red Hat
- Product
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
- Classifications
- CWE-287, CWE-303, T1003
- Attack vector
- local
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Dec 27, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Nov 3, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Affected versions are unavailable in this record. Check the vendor advisory for version and patch details.
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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