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Fencer Intel
medium 5.0

CVE-2012-6152 json

The Yahoo! protocol plugin in libpurple in Pidgin before 2.10.8 does not properly validate UTF-8 data, which allows remote attackers to cau…

published 2014-02-06 12 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2012-6008

cvss
5.0
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.8%
EPSS 3.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 90%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The Yahoo! protocol plugin in libpurple in Pidgin before 2.10.8 does not properly validate UTF-8 data, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) via crafted byte sequences.

Patch / fix

  • pidgin Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.10.8-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2012-6152

  • pidgin RHEL 5 2.6.6-32.el5
  • pidgin RHEL 6 2.7.9-27.el6
  • finch RHEL 5 2.6.6-32.el5
  • finch RHEL 6 2.7.9-27.el6
  • libpurple RHEL 5 2.6.6-32.el5
  • libpurple RHEL 6 2.7.9-27.el6
  • pidgin-perl RHEL 5 2.6.6-32.el5
  • pidgin-perl RHEL 6 2.7.9-27.el6

red hat advisories RHSA-2014:0139

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-2012-6152 updated cvss 4.3

pidgin: DoS when decoding non-UTF-8 strings in Yahoo protocol plugin

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) finch 2.6.6-32.el5, pidgin 2.6.6-32.el5, libpurple 2.6.6-32.el5, pidgin-perl 2.6.6-32.el5, libpurple-tcl 2.6.6-32.el5, libpurple-perl 2.6.6-32.el5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 6) pidgin 2.7.9-27.el6, libpurple 2.7.9-27.el6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Optional (v. 6) finch 2.7.9-27.el6, pidgin 2.7.9-27.el6, pidgin-perl 2.7.9-27.el6, libpurple-tcl 2.7.9-27.el6, libpurple-perl 2.7.9-27.el6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Workstation (v. 5 client) pidgin 2.6.6-32.el5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 6) finch 2.7.9-27.el6, pidgin 2.7.9-27.el6, libpurple 2.7.9-27.el6, pidgin-perl 2.7.9-27.el6, libpurple-tcl 2.7.9-27.el6, libpurple-perl 2.7.9-27.el6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) pidgin 2.7.9-27.el6, libpurple 2.7.9-27.el6
    +1 more products
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 6) finch 2.7.9-27.el6, pidgin 2.7.9-27.el6, pidgin-perl 2.7.9-27.el6, libpurple-tcl 2.7.9-27.el6, libpurple-perl 2.7.9-27.el6
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2014:0139
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 finch, pidgin, libpurple, pidgin-perl, libpurple-tcl, libpurple-perl
    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

3.79% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 90% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

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.