Abusing Ubuntu 24.04 features for root privilege escalation

Researchers from Snyk Security Labs discovered a privilege escalation vulnerability in Ubuntu 24.04, specifically in the cups daemon, which allows an attacker to gain root access by exploiting a bug in the DBus interface that manages the cups daemon. The vulnerability was found by analyzing the DBus bus and identifying a service that allowed for arbitrary command execution as root. The researchers used various tools and techniques, including strace and AppArmor, to exploit the vulnerability and achieve full root command execution. They also identified a way to use the wpa_supplicant project's CreateInterface method to load a shared object with malicious code, which could be executed by the cups daemon. The researchers reported their findings to Ubuntu Security and the OpenPrinting/cups team, who responded quickly with patches and advisories to fix the vulnerability.