CVE-2008-5394

unknown

Published — · Modified —

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CVSS v3

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CVSS v4 NEW

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not yet in upstream

VIR risk

1.0

Description

/bin/login in shadow 4.0.18.1 in Debian GNU/Linux, and probably other Linux distributions, allows local users in the utmp group to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on a temporary file referenced in a line (aka ut_line) field in a utmp entry.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

20%

Patch ETA

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Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-7313 local linux verified

Paul Szabo · 2008-12-01

Debian - Symlink In Login Arbitrary File Ownership

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

OS impact

Debian Fixed 5 releases

Version	Status	Fixed in
trixie	Fixed	`1:4.1.1-6`
sid	Fixed	`1:4.1.1-6`
forky	Fixed	`1:4.1.1-6`
bullseye	Fixed	`1:4.1.1-6`
bookworm	Fixed	`1:4.1.1-6`

References

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-5394

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.