CVE-2010-3431

Severity: low (CVSS 1.9 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2011-01-24 · updated 2026-06-16

Description

The privilege-dropping implementation in the (1) pam_env and (2) pam_mail modules in Linux-PAM (aka pam) 1.1.2 does not check the return value of the setfsuid system call, which might allow local users to obtain sensitive information by leveraging an unintended uid, as demonstrated by a symlink attack on the .pam_environment file in a user's home directory. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2010-3435.

Affected products

Linux-PAM: 1.1.2

References

http://git.altlinux.org/people/ldv/packages/?p=pam.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=843807a3a90f52e7538be756616510730a24739a
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/09/21/10
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/09/21/3
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/09/21/8
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/09/21/9
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/09/27/10
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/09/27/4
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/09/27/5
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/09/27/7
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/10/03/1
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/10/25/2
http://secunia.com/advisories/49711

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