CyberRota Analysis
AI-GeneratedA privilege escalation vulnerability exists in the leapp-upgrade-el9toel10 actor during RHEL 9 to RHEL 10 upgrades, allowing the mysqld process to run as root instead of the intended mysql user. This flaw enables an attacker with compromised mysql OS identity to execute arbitrary code with UID 0, bypassing SELinux protections and potentially leading to full system compromise. Administrators managing RHEL upgrades should prioritize addressing this vulnerability to mitigate the risk of unauthorized access and code execution.
Public Exploit Signal
A public exploit, PoC, GitHub repository or Metasploit reference was detected for this CVE.
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Original NVD Description
A privilege escalation flaw was found in the scan_mysql actor of leapp-upgrade-el9toel10 (provided by leapp-repository). During RHEL 9 to RHEL 10 upgrades, the actor runs: mysqld --validate-config --log-error-verbosity=2 directly as root in the Leapp actor context, bypassing the packaged MySQL systemd unit that normally starts the daemon as User=mysql. A process compromised as the mysql OS identity can write a version-2 persisted configuration (mysqld-auto.cnf) and a malicious shared object into /var/lib/mysql (a directory owned by mysql). That persisted map can set plugin_dir to /var/lib/mysql and early_plugin_load (or related loader options such as plugin_load / plugin_load_add) so MySQL loads the attacker-controlled object during configuration validation. Plugin loading can reach dlopen() before MySQL’s runtime-user check and before plugin-symbol validation. When an administrator subsequently runs the documented Leapp preupgrade or upgrade workflow, attacker-controlled code can execute as UID 0 with a full capability set in an unconfined SELinux domain (unconfined_t). The attack does not require write access to the default system plugin path under /usr; redirecting plugin_dir via mysql-owned persisted state is sufficient. Ordinary SQL privileges alone (including highly privileged SQL accounts) are not a sufficient startpoint — OS-level execution as the mysql service identity is required, plus later administrator invocation of Leapp.