CVE-2023-4001

An authentication bypass flaw was found in GRUB due to the way that GRUB uses the UUID of a device to search for the configuration file that contains the password hash for the GRUB password protection feature. An attacker capable of attaching an external drive such as a USB stick containing a file system with a duplicate UUID (the same as in the "/boot/" file system) can bypass the GRUB password protection feature on UEFI systems, which enumerate removable drives before non-removable ones. This issue was introduced in a downstream patch in Red Hat's version of grub2 and does not affect the upstream package.

Score

CVSS 3.1 6.8 Medium

Status

Modified - secalert@redhat.com

Published

2024-01-15

Last modified

2025-11-20

Weaknesses

CWE-290

Affected products

• Fedora (Fedoraproject)
• Grub2 (Gnu)
• Enterprise Linux (Redhat)
• Rhel Eus (Redhat)

References

• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:0437
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:0456
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:0468
• https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-4001
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2224951
• https://dfir.ru/2024/01/15/cve-2023-4001-a-vulnerability-in-the-downstream-grub-boot-manager/
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/01/15/3
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/3OBADMKHQLJOBA32Q7XPNSYM…
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/CHLZQ47HM64NDOHMHYO7VIJF…
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20240216-0006/