CVE-2003-0885

Exp

Xscreensaver 4.14 contains certain debugging code that should have been omitted, which causes Xscreensaver to create temporary files insecurely in the (1) apple2, (2) xanalogtv, and (3) pong screensavers, and allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack.

Published: 2003-12-31 Last update: 2026-04-16 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2003-0885 is rated Exploit Available (59.8/100): CVSS Medium severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.36%). 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Public exploit references (Exploit-DB) for CVE-2003-0885

EDB-ID Source Kind Published Link
— nvd_ref exploit_tag Exploit-DB ↗

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2003-0885

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2025-03-30 0.54% 0.36% -0.18%
2 2025-03-29 0.36% 0.54% +0.18%
3 2025-03-17 — 0.36% —

Full EPSS history (6 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2003-0885

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
6.4 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:P Click to expand
Access vector (AV:N)
Can be exploited remotely over network reachability.
Access complexity (AC:L)
Exploitation conditions are straightforward and predictable.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:N)
No confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:P)
Partial integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:P)
Partial availability impact.
 10.0 4.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2003-0885

OS Trackers for CVE-2003-0885

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2003-0885 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (xscreensaver), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2003-0885
redhat — — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2003-0885

Vendor comments (NVD) for CVE-2003-0885

  • Red Hat (2006-08-30T00:00:00)

    This issue did not affect the versions of Xscreensaver as distributed with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, 3, or 4.

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2003-0885

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
xscreensaver xscreensaver 4.14 cpe:2.3:a:xscreensaver:xscreensaver:4.14:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2003-0885

cvelogic Threat Intelligence