- 7.3HighCVSS base score
- 0.32%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 75% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
A vulnerability in Google Cloud Platform's guest-oslogin versions between 20190304 and 20200507 allows a user that is only granted the role "roles/compute.osLogin" to escalate privileges to root. Using their membership to the "adm" group, users with this role are able to read the DHCP XID from the systemd journal. Using the DHCP XID, it is then possible to set the IP address and hostname of the instance to any value, which is then stored in /etc/hosts. An attacker can then point metadata.google.internal to an arbitrary IP address and impersonate the GCE metadata server which make it is possible to instruct the OS Login PAM module to grant administrative privileges. All images created after 2020-May-07 (20200507) are fixed, and if you cannot update, we recommend you edit /etc/group/security.conf and remove the "adm" user from the OS Login entry.
Timeline
ID reserved
By Google
- 4 months later
· 4 months later
Published
- 4 years later
· 4 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GoogleCNA (assigner) | 4.0 | High7.3 | CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:A/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 4.0 | High7.3 | CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:A/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.32% · top 75% of all CVEs (12 Nov 2026)
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.3.
Affected products
- affected 20190304 – < 20200507
- unaffected 20200507
References
References5
- https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/guest-oslogin/pull/29 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMx_transferred
- https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-security/gl-redteam/red-team-tech-notes/-/tree/master/oslogin-privesc-june-2020 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- https://cloud.google.com/support/bulletins/#gcp-2020-008 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- openSUSE-SU-2020:0996 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_SUSEx_transferred
- openSUSE-SU-2020:1014 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_SUSEx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2020-29742 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2020-8903)Record last updated .