SSSD AD Kerberos Auth Plugin Flaw Enables Privilege Escalation
CVE-2025-11561 Published on October 9, 2025

Sssd: sssd default kerberos configuration allows privilege escalation on ad-joined linux systems
A flaw was found in the integration of Active Directory and the System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) on Linux systems. In default configurations, the Kerberos local authentication plugin (sssd_krb5_localauth_plugin) is enabled, but a fallback to the an2ln plugin is possible. This fallback allows an attacker with permission to modify certain AD attributes (such as userPrincipalName or samAccountName) to impersonate privileged users, potentially resulting in unauthorized access or privilege escalation on domain-joined Linux hosts.

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Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2025-11561 can be exploited with network access, and requires small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to be very high.

Attack Vector:
NETWORK
Attack Complexity:
LOW
Privileges Required:
LOW
User Interaction:
NONE
Scope:
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact:
HIGH
Integrity Impact:
HIGH
Availability Impact:
HIGH

Timeline

Reported to Red Hat.

Made public.

Weakness Type

Improper Privilege Management

The software does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor.


Products Associated with CVE-2025-11561

You can be notified by email with stack.watch whenever vulnerabilities like CVE-2025-11561 are published in these products:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
 
Red Hat Openshift
 
Red Hat Rhel Els
 
Red Hat Rhel Eus Long Life
 
Red Hat Rhel Aus
 
Red Hat Rhel E4s
 
Red Hat Rhel Tus
 
Red Hat Rhel Eus
 
Red Hat Ceph Storage
 

Exploit Probability

EPSS
0.20%
Percentile
42.26%

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.