GRUB2 NULL Check Leak Causes Crash or IVT Corruption
CVE-2024-45775 Published on February 18, 2025
Grub2: commands/extcmd: missing check for failed allocation
A flaw was found in grub2 where the grub_extcmd_dispatcher() function calls grub_arg_list_alloc() to allocate memory for the grub's argument list. However, it fails to check in case the memory allocation fails. Once the allocation fails, a NULL point will be processed by the parse_option() function, leading grub to crash or, in some rare scenarios, corrupt the IVT data.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2024-45775 can be exploited with local system access, and requires user privileges. This vulnerability is consided to have a high level of attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have a small impact on confidentiality and integrity, and a high impact on availability.
Timeline
Reported to Red Hat.
Made public. 15 days later.
Weakness Type
Unchecked Return Value
The software does not check the return value from a method or function, which can prevent it from detecting unexpected states and conditions. Two common programmer assumptions are "this function call can never fail" and "it doesn't matter if this function call fails". If an attacker can force the function to fail or otherwise return a value that is not expected, then the subsequent program logic could lead to a vulnerability, because the software is not in a state that the programmer assumes. For example, if the program calls a function to drop privileges but does not check the return code to ensure that privileges were successfully dropped, then the program will continue to operate with the higher privileges.
Products Associated with CVE-2024-45775
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Exploit Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.