SOC status:Duty analyst on shift

UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityModified

CVE-2019-15793

A local attacker could use this to possibly bypass discretionary access control permissions.

EXPLOIT ✓HIGH 8.8EPSS 0.69%

Does this matter?

A public exploit is published in Exploit-DB (verified) and the impact is high, while EPSS rates exploitation at 0.7%. Anyone can run this; patch or mitigate before the next change window and check exposed instances for signs of use.

Description

In shiftfs, a non-upstream patch to the Linux kernel included in the Ubuntu 5.0 and 5.3 kernel series, several locations which shift ids translate user/group ids before performing operations in the lower filesystem were translating them into init_user_ns, whereas they should have been translated into the s_user_ns for the lower filesystem. This resulted in using ids other than the intended ones in the lower fs, which likely did not map into the shifts s_user_ns. A local attacker could use this to possibly bypass discretionary access control permissions.

CVSS 3.1
8.8 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS
0.69% probability · 52th percentile
Public exploits
1 in Exploit-DB · verified · first 20 November 2019
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-538, CWE-276
Affected
linux/linux kernel · canonical/ubuntu linux
Source
security@ubuntu.com
EPSS trend
0%3%5%27 October 2026: 0.69%27 October 202627 October 2026

EPSS 0.7% since 27 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.

Public exploits (1)

Entries in Exploit-DB that cite this CVE. Links go to the Exploit-DB page and to the file in the public repository; nothing is hosted here. A verified tick means the Exploit-DB team confirmed the exploit works against the stated version.

EDB-IDTitleTypePublishedVerified
EDB-47693source ↗Ubuntu 19.10 - Refcount Underflow and Type Confusion in shiftfslinux · Google Security Researchdos20 November 2019yes

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.