perltidy through 20160302, as used by perlcritic, check-all-the-things, and other software, relies on the current working directory for cer…

published 2017-05-17 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-1556

cvss: 5.5; version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.3%; EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 25%
public exploits: 0; none known

perltidy through 20160302, as used by perlcritic, check-all-the-things, and other software, relies on the current working directory for certain output files and does not have a symlink-attack protection mechanism, which allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files by creating a symlink, as demonstrated by creating a perltidy.ERR symlink that the victim cannot delete.

Patch / fix

distros 1

perltidy Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 20140328-2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-10374

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-2016-10374 updated 2026-11-07 cvss 2.8

perltidy: Uses current working directory without symlink-attack protection

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perltidy Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perltidy
affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”

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

0.32% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 25% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
NVD	3.1	5.5	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
NVD	2.0	2.1	AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N

Classification

Weakness

CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access

References

bugs.debian.org /862667
issue-tracking, third-party-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2016-10374
NVD CVE-2016-10374

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.

Summary