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Fencer Intel
medium 5.8

CVE-2013-6171 json

checkpassword-reply in Dovecot before 2.2.7 performs setuid operations to a user who is authenticating, which allows local users to bypass…

published 12y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2013-6000

cvss
5.8
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.5%
EPSS 1.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 73%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

checkpassword-reply in Dovecot before 2.2.7 performs setuid operations to a user who is authenticating, which allows local users to bypass authentication and access virtual email accounts by attaching to the process and using a restricted file descriptor to modify account information in the response to the dovecot-auth server.

Patch / fix

  • dovecot Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1:2.2.9-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2013-6171

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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-2013-6171 updated cvss 2.1

dovecot: passdb checkpassword authentication local bypass

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 dovecot Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 dovecot, dovecot-mysql, dovecot-pgsql, dovecot-pigeonhole Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 dovecot, dovecot-mysql, dovecot-pgsql, dovecot-pigeonhole
    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

1.46% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 73% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 5.8 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:N

Classification

Weakness

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.