Skip to content
Fencer Intel
high 8.1

CVE-2016-3169 json

Drupal saving user accounts can sometimes grant the user all roles

published 2016-04-12 10 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-q3p9-8728-wq7x , EUVD-2022-4869

cvss
8.1
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.2%
EPSS 2.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 82%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The User module in Drupal 6.x before 6.38 and 7.x before 7.43 allows remote attackers to gain privileges by leveraging contributed or custom code that calls the user_save function with an explicit category and loads all roles into the array.

Patch / fix

  • packagist drupal/core 6.38, 7.43
  • packagist drupal/drupal 6.38, 7.43

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-2016-3169 updated cvss 6.8

drupal: several issues fixed in 7.43 and 6.38 (SA-CORE-2016-001)

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    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

2.22% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 82% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 8.1 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.8 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
GitHub 3.0 8.1 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
packagist drupal/core
>=6.0, <6.38
>=7.0, <7.43
6.38
7.43
packagist drupal/drupal
>=7.0, <7.43
>=6.0, <6.38
7.43
6.38

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-264 Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls
  • CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management

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.