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.
EPSS: 0.011 (61.7th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
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.
Affected products
- Gnu Glibc
- Canonical Ubuntu_linux — versions 12.04, 14.04, 15.10
- Debian Debian_linux — versions 8.0
- N/a — versions n/a
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- cve@mitre.org (x_refsource_MISC)
- cve@mitre.org (x_refsource_CONFIRM)
- cve@mitre.org (mailing-list, x_refsource_MLIST)
- cve@mitre.org (vdb-entry, x_refsource_BID)
- cve@mitre.org (x_refsource_UBUNTU, vendor-advisory)
- cve@mitre.org (x_refsource_CONFIRM)
- cve@mitre.org (x_refsource_CONFIRM)
- cve@mitre.org (mailing-list, x_refsource_MLIST)
- cve@mitre.org (x_refsource_UBUNTU, vendor-advisory)
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.