Debian LinuxOperating system · Debian
CVE-2024-35235
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedOpenPrinting CUPS is an open source printing system for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. In versions 2.4.8 and earlier, when starting the cupsd server with a Listen configuration item pointing to a symbolic link, the cupsd process can be caused to perform an arbitrary chmod of the provided argument, providing world-writable access to the target. Given that cupsd is often running as root, this can result in the change of permission of any user or system files to be world writable. Given the aforementioned Ubuntu AppArmor context, on such systems this vulnerability is limited to those files modifiable by the cupsd process. In that specific case it was found to be possible to turn the configuration of the Listen argument into full control over the cupsd.conf and cups-files.conf configuration files. By later setting the User and Group arguments in cups-files.conf, and printing with a printer configured by PPD with a `FoomaticRIPCommandLine` argument, arbitrary user and group (not root) command execution could be achieved, which can further be used on Ubuntu systems to achieve full root command execution. Commit ff1f8a623e090dee8a8aadf12a6a4b25efac143d contains a patch for the issue.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysisA file operation follows a symbolic link without checking where it actually points, so an attacker who can plant or swap a link redirects the operation to a file they should not be able to touch. It is a common local privilege-escalation primitive. Remediation is resolving and validating the real target path, and avoiding operations on attacker-controllable links.
General guidance for the link following (symlink) class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data
Debian LinuxOperating system
= 10.0<= 2.4.8CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- High
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
dbcve · scopedCUPS 2.4.9 or later
- 1. Identify the current CUPS version installed on the system using: `dpkg -l | grep cups` or `cupsd --version`
- 2. Upgrade CUPS to version 2.4.9 or later, which contains the fix for CVE-2024-35235
- 3. On Debian 10 (Buster), update the package list first: `apt-get update`
- 4. Upgrade CUPS: `apt-get install cups`
- 5. Verify the new version is installed: `cupsd --version`
- 6. Restart the CUPS service: `systemctl restart cups`
- 7. Ensure the Listen directive in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf does not point to symbolic links as a hardening measure
Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2024-35235 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2024-35235 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
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- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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