Debian and Ubuntu APT Flaw Lets MitM Attackers Swap Verified Packages and Run Code as Root
C The Hacker News ·
Admiralty grading (A–F · 1–6)
Source reliability
- A Completely reliable
- B Usually reliable
- C Fairly reliable
- D Not usually reliable
- E Unreliable
- F Cannot be judged
Information credibility
- 1 Confirmed
- 2 Probably true
- 3 Possibly true
- 4 Doubtful
- 5 Improbable
- 6 Cannot be judged
NATO Admiralty (AJP-2.1) grades confidence, independent of the risk score. Cross-source corroboration isn't tracked for non-CVE news, so single-source items are capped at a lower credibility number; a low number does not imply low quality.
Key insight
The report shows that not only packages but the update mechanism itself can be attacked: APT's retry behavior enables verified package substitution and root code execution when an attacker has a MitM position.
Description
The vulnerability affects the APT package manager in Debian and Ubuntu. In a man-in-the-middle attack, an attacker can manipulate package downloads so that a checked package is replaced with their own. The injected code then runs with root privileges. The prerequisite is that APT retries failed downloads, which is the default in current versions. Debian, Ubuntu, and the APT developers published security advisories on November 4; active exploitation is not mentioned.
Risk score
- cvss base
- 0.00
- kev bonus
- 0.00
- epss bonus
- 0.00
- poc bonus
- 0.00
- raw before weight
- 0.00
- industry weight
- 1.10
- freshness factor
- 0.60
- exploitability factor
- 1.00
- days old
- 6.00
- vendor mismatch penalty
- 0.00
- consensus penalty
- -3.00
Path: operational
Consensus check
The pipeline self-checks before delivery. These rules lowered the score:
-
TTP_SKIPPEDTTP mapping skipped (placeholder or aggregation article) −3
- Consensus penalty:
- −3.0
- Total penalty:
- −3.0