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Fencer Intel
medium 4.4

CVE-2012-3386 json

The "make distcheck" rule in GNU Automake before 1.11.6 and 1.12.x before 1.12.2 grants world-writable permissions to the extraction direct…

published 2012-08-07 14 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2012-3358

cvss
4.4
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 41%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The "make distcheck" rule in GNU Automake before 1.11.6 and 1.12.x before 1.12.2 grants world-writable permissions to the extraction directory, which introduces a race condition that allows local users to execute arbitrary code via unspecified vectors.

Patch / fix

  • automake Debian 14 1:1.4-p6-13.1
  • automake1.11 Debian 12 1:1.11.6-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2012-3386

  • automake RHEL 5 1.9.6-3.el5
  • automake RHEL 6 1.11.1-4.el6

red hat advisories RHSA-2014:1243RHSA-2013:0526

  • gv openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.2.2-5.5
  • wdiff Package Hub 15 SP4, openSUSE Leap 15.4 1.2.2-bp154.2.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10576-1openSUSE-SU-2022:10031-1

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-2012-3386 updated cvss 3.7

automake: locally exploitable "make distcheck" bug

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 automake15, automake16, automake17 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 automake15, automake16
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) automake 1.9.6-3.el5
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2014:1243
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Optional (v. 6) automake 1.11.1-4.el6
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2013:0526
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Workstation (v. 5 client) automake 1.9.6-3.el5
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2014:1243
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node (v. 6) automake 1.11.1-4.el6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) automake 1.11.1-4.el6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) automake 1.11.1-4.el6
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2013:0526

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

0.47% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 41% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • git.savannah.gnu.org http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/automake.git/commit/?id=784b3e6ccc7c72a1c95c340cbbe8897d6b689d76 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 4.4 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-264 Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls
  • CWE-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization

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.