The kickstart file in Red Hat QuickStart Cloud Installer (QCI) forces use of MD5 passwords on deployed systems, which makes it easier for a…

published 2016-09-22 10 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-7267

cvss: 8.4; version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.4%; EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 32%
public exploits: 0; none known

The kickstart file in Red Hat QuickStart Cloud Installer (QCI) forces use of MD5 passwords on deployed systems, which makes it easier for attackers to determine cleartext passwords via a brute-force attack.

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-2016-6340 updated 2025-11-21 cvss 1.9

QCI: uses MD5 as password hash algorithm on deployed systems

Red Hat Quickstart Cloud Installer 1 Distribution
affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”

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

0.39% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 32% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
NVD	3.0	8.4	CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	2.0	2.1	AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

Classification

Weakness

CWE-254 7PK - Security Features

References

bugzilla.redhat.com /show_bug.cgi?id=1370315
issue-tracking, vdb-entry, vendor-advisory
securityfocus.com /bid/92655
vdb-entry, third-party-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2016-6340
NVD CVE-2016-6340

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