Vulnerability in GNU Glibc

CVE-2016-2856

pt_chown in the glibc package before 2.19-18+deb8u4 on Debian jessie; the elibc package before 2.15-0ubuntu10.14 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and before 2.19-0ubuntu6.8 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS; and the glibc package before 2.21-0ubuntu4.2 on Ubuntu 15.10 and before 2.23-0ubuntu1 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 16.10 lacks a namespace check associated with file-descriptor passing, which allows local users to capture keystrokes and spoof data, and possibly gain privileges, via pts read and write operations, related to debian/sysdeps/linux.mk. NOTE: this is not considered a vulnerability in the upstream GNU C Library because the upstream documentation has a clear security recommendation against the --enable-pt_chown option.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 8.4 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.010 (62.3th percentile), scored .

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 62nd percentile — 62.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2016-2856: held from 0.011 to 0.010.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.011 · newest: 0.010 · change: -0.001

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2016-2856?
CVE-2016-2856 is a high-severity vulnerability in GNU Glibc, classified under CWE-264. CVSS score: 8.4/10. Published 2016-03-14.
How severe is CVE-2016-2856?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 8.4 out of 10.