CVE-2012-3579

high

Published 2012-08-29 · Modified 2026-04-29

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CVSS v3

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CVSS v4 NEW

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not yet in upstream

VIR risk

8.9

Description

Symantec Messaging Gateway (SMG) before 10.0 has a default password for an unspecified account, which makes it easier for remote attackers to obtain privileged access via an SSH session.

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-21136 remote linux verified

Metasploit · 2012-08-30

Symantec Messaging Gateway 9.5/9.5.1 - SSH Default Password Security Bypass (Metasploit)

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

Metasploit modules

exploit_linux/ssh/symantec_smg_ssh rank 600

Symantec Messaging Gateway 9.5 Default SSH Password Vulnerability

Source fetch failed: fetch_error — view the original via the link above.

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions
symantec	messaging_gateway	`{"endIncluding":"9.5.4"}`
symantec	messaging_gateway	`9.5`
symantec	messaging_gateway	`9.5.1`
symantec	messaging_gateway	`9.5.2`
symantec	messaging_gateway	`9.5.3`

References

CWEs

CWE-264

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

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