Skip to content
Fencer Intel
medium 6.8

CVE-2012-3479 json

lisp/files.el in Emacs 23.2, 23.3, 23.4, and 24.1 automatically executes eval forms in local-variable sections when the enable-local-variab…

published 2012-08-25 14 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2012-3435

cvss
6.8
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.7%
EPSS 3.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 89%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

lisp/files.el in Emacs 23.2, 23.3, 23.4, and 24.1 automatically executes eval forms in local-variable sections when the enable-local-variables option is set to :safe, which allows user-assisted remote attackers to execute arbitrary Emacs Lisp code via a crafted file.

Patch / fix

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-2012-3479 updated cvss 5.1

emacs: Evaluation of 'eval' forms in file-local variable sections, when 'enable-local-variables' set to ':safe'

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 emacs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 emacs, emacs-el, emacs-nox, emacs-common
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

3.74% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 89% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 6.8 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

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.