What is CVE-2008-4989?

CVE-2008-4989 is a medium-severity vulnerability in GNU Gnutls, classified under Improper Certificate Validation. CVSS score: 5.9/10. Published 2008-11-13.

How severe is CVE-2008-4989?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.9 out of 10.

Vulnerability in GNU Gnutls

CVE-2008-4989

The _gnutls_x509_verify_certificate function in lib/x509/verify.c in libgnutls in GnuTLS before 2.6.1 trusts certificate chains in which the last certificate is an arbitrary trusted, self-signed certificate, which allows man-in-the-middle attackers to insert a spoofed certificate for any Distinguished Name (DN).

Vulnerability class: Improper Certificate Validation

Published 2008-11-13 · last modified 2026-06-16.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.9 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.019 (78.7th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 79th percentile — 78.7% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.019 · newest: 0.019 · change: 0.000

Affected products

GNU Gnutls
Canonical Ubuntu Linux — versions 6.06, 7.10, 8.04
Debian Linux — versions 4.0
Fedoraproject Fedora — versions 8, 9
openSUSE
SUSE Linux Enterprise — versions 10.0, 11.0
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server — versions 10, 11

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-295 — Improper Certificate Validation

References

www.mandriva.com/security/advisories (vendor-advisory, Broken Link)
www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-678-2 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
secunia.com/advisories/33694 (Broken Link, third-party-advisory)
security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200901-10.xml (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
www.redhat.com/support/errata/RHSA-2008-0982.html (vendor-advisory, Broken Link)
usn.ubuntu.com/678-1/ (vendor-advisory, Broken Link)
www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/498431/100/0/threaded (mailing-list, VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, Broken Link)
article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.encryption.gpg.gnutls.devel/3215 (mailing-list, Patch, Broken Link)
article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.encryption.gpg.gnutls.devel/3217 (mailing-list, Broken Link)
wiki.rpath.com/Advisories:rPSA-2008-0322 (Broken Link)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2008-4989?: CVE-2008-4989 is a medium-severity vulnerability in GNU Gnutls, classified under Improper Certificate Validation. CVSS score: 5.9/10. Published 2008-11-13.
How severe is CVE-2008-4989?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.9 out of 10.