USN-7363-1: PAM-PKCS#11 vulnerabilities

20 March 2025

PAM-PKCS#11 could be used to bypass authentication.

Reduce your security exposure

Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.

Learn more about Ubuntu Pro

Releases

Packages

  • pam-pkcs11 - Fully featured PAM module for using PKCS#11 smart cards

Details

Marcus Rückert and Matthias Gerstner discovered that PAM-PKCS#11 did not
properly handle certain return codes when authentication was not possible.
An attacker could possibly use this issue to bypass authentication. This
issue only affected Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.10. (CVE-2025-24531)

It was discovered that PAM-PKCS#11 did not require a private key signature
for authentication by default. An attacker could possibly use this issue
to bypass authentication. (CVE-2025-24032)

Reduce your security exposure

Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.

Learn more about Ubuntu Pro

Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 24.10
Ubuntu 24.04
Ubuntu 22.04
Ubuntu 20.04
Ubuntu 18.04
Ubuntu 16.04

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

References

Join the discussion

Need help with your security needs?

Ubuntu Pro provides up to ten-year security coverage for over 23,000 open-source packages within the Ubuntu Main and Universe repositories.

Talk to an expert to find out what would work best for you

Further reading