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Fencer Intel
medium 4.7

CVE-2017-9079 json

Dropbear before 2017.75 might allow local users to read certain files as root, if the file has the authorized_keys file format with a comma…

published 2017-05-19 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2017-18018

cvss
4.7
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 24%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Dropbear before 2017.75 might allow local users to read certain files as root, if the file has the authorized_keys file format with a command= option. This occurs because ~/.ssh/authorized_keys is read with root privileges and symlinks are followed.

Patch / fix

  • dropbear_ssh_project dropbear_ssh 2017.75
  • dropbear Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2016.74-5

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-9079

  • dropbear Alpine 3.5, Alpine 3.4 2017.75-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2017-9079

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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-2017-9079 updated

dropbear: Multiple vulnerabilities fixed in 2017.75 version

  • 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

0.31% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 24% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 4.7 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
NVD 2.0 4.7 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:N/A:N

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource

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.