NULL Pointer Dereference Affecting pam-pkcs11 package, versions *


Severity

Recommended
low

Based on Debian security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.14% (4th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-DEBIAN14-PAMPKCS11-11764007
  • published10 Aug 2025
  • disclosed10 Feb 2025

Introduced: 10 Feb 2025

CVE-2025-24031  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-476  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

There is no fixed version for Debian:14 pam-pkcs11.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream pam-pkcs11 package and not the pam-pkcs11 package as distributed by Debian. See How to fix? for Debian:14 relevant fixed versions and status.

PAM-PKCS#11 is a Linux-PAM login module that allows a X.509 certificate based user login. In versions 0.6.12 and prior, the pam_pkcs11 module segfaults when a user presses ctrl-c/ctrl-d when they are asked for a PIN. When a user enters no PIN at all, pam_get_pwd will never initialize the password buffer pointer and as such cleanse will try to dereference an uninitialized pointer. On my system this pointer happens to have the value 3 most of the time when running sudo and as such it will segfault. The most likely impact to a system affected by this issue is an availability impact due to a daemon that uses PAM crashing. As of time of publication, a patch for the issue is unavailable.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1