What is CVE-2016-4983?

CVE-2016-4983 is a low-severity vulnerability in Dovecot, classified under Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource. CVSS score: 3.3/10. Published 2019-11-05.

How severe is CVE-2016-4983?

Low severity. CVSS v3 base score is 3.3 out of 10.

Vulnerability in Dovecot

CVE-2016-4983

A postinstall script in the dovecot rpm allows local users to read the contents of newly created SSL/TLS key files.

Published 2019-11-05 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 3.3 (Low). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.004 (31.4th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 31st percentile — 31.4% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.004 · newest: 0.004 · change: +0.000

Affected products

Dovecot
Fedora Dovecot22 — versions dovecot22-2.2.25-3.1, dovecot22-2.2.18-9.1, dovecot22-2.2.13-3.7.1
openSUSE Leap — versions 42.1, 42.2
openSUSE — versions 13.2
Red Hat Enterprise Linux — versions 4.0, 5.0, 6.0

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-732 — Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource

References

bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi (Exploit, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi (Exploit, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2016-11/msg00096.html (Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2016-4983?: CVE-2016-4983 is a low-severity vulnerability in Dovecot, classified under Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource. CVSS score: 3.3/10. Published 2019-11-05.
How severe is CVE-2016-4983?: Low severity. CVSS v3 base score is 3.3 out of 10.