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Fencer Intel
medium 4.7

CVE-2010-3435 json

The (1) pam_env and (2) pam_mail modules in Linux-PAM (aka pam) before 1.1.2 use root privileges during read access to files and directorie…

published 2011-01-24 15 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2010-3433

cvss
4.7
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 30%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The (1) pam_env and (2) pam_mail modules in Linux-PAM (aka pam) before 1.1.2 use root privileges during read access to files and directories that belong to arbitrary user accounts, which might allow local users to obtain sensitive information by leveraging this filesystem activity, as demonstrated by a symlink attack on the .pam_environment file in a user's home directory.

Patch / fix

  • pam Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.1.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2010-3435

  • pam RHEL 6 1.1.1-4.el6_0.1
  • pam RHEL 5 0.99.6.2-6.el5_5.2

red hat advisories RHSA-2010:0891RHSA-2010:0819

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2010-3435 updated cvss 1.2

pam: pam_env and pam_mail accessing users' file with root privileges

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 pam
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) pam 0.99.6.2-6.el5_5.2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) pam 0.99.6.2-6.el5_5.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2010:0819
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 6) pam 1.1.1-4.el6_0.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Optional (v. 6) pam 1.1.1-4.el6_0.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2010:0891
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Workstation (v. 5 client) pam 0.99.6.2-6.el5_5.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2010:0819
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node (v. 6) pam 1.1.1-4.el6_0.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node Optional (v. 6) pam 1.1.1-4.el6_0.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) pam 1.1.1-4.el6_0.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) pam 1.1.1-4.el6_0.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2010:0891

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.37% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 30% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 4.7 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:N/A:N

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.