CVE-2018-25078

Publication date 26 January 2023

Last updated 25 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

man-db before 2.8.5 on Gentoo allows local users (with access to the man user account) to gain root privileges because /usr/bin/mandb is executed by root but not owned by root. (Also, the owner can strip the setuid and setgid bits.)

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
man-db	23.04 lunar	Not affected
	22.10 kinetic	Not affected
	22.04 LTS jammy	Not affected
	20.04 LTS focal	Not affected
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not affected
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not affected
	14.04 LTS trusty	Not affected

Notes

mdeslaur

This doesn't affect Ubuntu, mandb is owned by root.

Severity score breakdown

CVSS version: CVSS v3.0

Base score 7.8 · High

Base metrics

Parameter	Value
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	Low
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality impact	High
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	High

Scores

Parameter	Value
Base score	7.8 · High
Exploitability score	-
Impact score	-

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

References

Other references

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2018-25078