CVE-2015-3246

HIGH

7.4

CVSS Score

Published: August 11, 2015 at 02:00 PM UTC

Updated: October 2, 2026 at 11:33 AM UTC

3 products affected across 3 vendorsEnterprise LinuxopenSUSELibuser

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Severity

HIGH7.4

Exploitation

CISA KEV

Exploit prediction

EPSS 9%

SSVC

Active

Actively Exploited

CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog

EPSS Score8.5%

EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) estimates a 8.5% chance this CVE is exploited in the wild within the next 30 days — higher than 95% of all CVEs. It complements CVSS: a high EPSS on a mid-severity CVE can still be urgent.

Red Hat libuser contains a race condition vulnerability that allows authenticated local users to corrupt the /etc/passwd file to cause a denial of service or privilege escalation.

Required Action

Apply mitigations in accordance with vendor instructions, ensuring compliance with CISA’s BOD 26-04 Prioritizing Security Updates Based on Risk (see URL in Notes) guidance and CISA’s “Forensics Triage Requirements” (see URL in Notes). Follow applicable BOD 26-04 guidance for cloud services or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable. Stakeholders are responsible for evaluating each asset's internet exposure and ensuring adherence to BOD 26-04 patching guidelines.

Ransomware Use

Unknown

Added to KEV

Aug 26, 2026

Remediation Due

Sep 9, 2026

47 days overdue

Notes

This vulnerability affects an open-source component, third-party library, protocol, or proprietary implementation that could be used by different products. For more information, please see: https://access.redhat.com/articles/1537873

BOD 26-04: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/directives/bod-26-04-prioritizing-security-updates-based-risk

Forensics Triage Requirements: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/directives/bod-26-04-implementation-guidance-prioritizing-security-updates-based-risk

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2015-3246

Description

libuser before 0.56.13-8 and 0.60 before 0.60-7, as used in the userhelper program in the usermode package, directly modifies /etc/passwd, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (inconsistent file state) by causing an error during the modification. NOTE: this issue can be combined with CVE-2015-3245 to gain privileges.