CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2025-61667 — The Datadog Agent collects events and metrics from hosts and sends them to Datadog
The Datadog Agent collects events and metrics from hosts and sends them to Datadog. A vulnerability within the Datadog Linux Host Agent versions 7.65.0 through 7.70.2 exists due to insufficient permissions being set on the `opt/datadog-agent/python-scripts/__pycache__` directory during installation. Code in this directory is only run by the Agent during Agent install/upgrades. This could allow an attacker with local access to modify files in this directory, which would then subsequently be run when the Agent is upgraded, resulting in local privilege escalation. This issue requires local access to the host and a valid low privilege account to be vulnerable. Note that this vulnerability only impacts the Linux Host Agent. Other variations of the Agent including the container, kubernetes, windows host and other agents are not impacted. Version 7.71.0 contains a patch for the issue.
- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 7 (4.0)
- Published
- 2025-11-12
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- windows/system
- Weaknesses
- CWE-276
Affected products
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Matched remediation archetype
Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management
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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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