CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2018-5540 — F5 Big-Ip Domain Name System security vulnerability
On F5 BIG-IP 13.0.0-13.0.1, 12.1.0-12.1.3.3, 11.6.0-11.6.3.1, or 11.5.1-11.5.6, Enterprise Manager 3.1.1, BIG-IQ Centralized Management 5.0.0-5.1.0, BIG-IQ Cloud and Orchestration 1.0.0, or F5 iWorkflow 2.1.0-2.3.0 the big3d process does not irrevocably minimize group privileges at start up.
- Severity
- Medium
- CVSS
- 4.4 (3.0)
- Published
- 2018-07-19
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-732
Affected products
- f5 / big-ip_domain_name_system
- f5 / big-ip_global_traffic_manager
- f5 / enterprise_manager / 3.1.1
- f5 / big-iq_centralized_management
- f5 / big-iq_cloud_and_orchestration / 1.0.0
- f5 / f5_iworkflow
Showing 6 representative product identities from 12 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.
Matched remediation archetype
Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
- Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
- Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.
Remediate safely
- Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
- Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
- Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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