CVE-2017-6590

medium

Published 2017-03-09 · Modified 2026-05-13

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CVSS v3

6.3

CVSS:3.0/AV:P/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

6.3

Description

An issue was discovered in network-manager-applet (aka network-manager-gnome) in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, and 16.10. A local attacker could use this issue at the default Ubuntu login screen to access local files and execute arbitrary commands as the lightdm user. The exploitation requires physical access to the locked computer and the Wi-Fi must be turned on. An access point that lets you use a certificate to login is required as well, but it's easy to create one. Then, it's possible to open a nautilus window and browse directories. One also can open some applications such as Firefox, which is useful for downloading malicious binaries.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

63%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

OS impact

OS	Version	Status
sles		affected
ubuntu	12.04	affected
ubuntu	14.04	affected
ubuntu	16.04	affected
ubuntu	16.10	affected
debian	bookworm	affected
debian	bullseye	affected
debian	forky	affected
debian	sid	affected
debian	trixie	affected

References

CWEs

CWE-863

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.