CVE-2016-5425

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 3.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2016-10-13 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-276

Description

The Tomcat package on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7, Fedora, CentOS, Oracle Linux, and possibly other Linux distributions uses weak permissions for /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tomcat.conf, which allows local users to gain root privileges by leveraging membership in the tomcat group.

Affected products

Apache Tomcat: all versions

References

http://legalhackers.com/advisories/Tomcat-RedHat-Pkgs-Root-PrivEsc-Exploit-CVE-2016-5425.html
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/139041/Apache-Tomcat-8-7-6-Privilege-Escalation.html
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-2046.html
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/10/10/2
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/linuxbulletinoct2016-3090545.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/93472
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1036979
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/6b414817c2b0bf351138911c8c922ec5dd577ebc0b9a7f42d705752d%40%3Cissues.activemq.apache.org%3E
https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/40488/
https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/security-advisory/cpuoct2019-5072832.html
http://legalhackers.com/advisories/Tomcat-RedHat-Pkgs-Root-PrivEsc-Exploit-CVE-2016-5425.html
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/139041/Apache-Tomcat-8-7-6-Privilege-Escalation.html

Get alerted when CVE-2016-5425 or the next vulnerability affects your stack