useradd in shadow-utils before 4.0.3, and possibly other versions before 4.0.8, does not provide a required argument to the open function when creating a new user mailbox, which causes the mailbox to be created with unpredictable permissions and possibly allows attackers to read or modify the mailbox.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2006-1174 is rated Low Risk (27.5/100): CVSS Low severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.44%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
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 | 2026-06-15 | 0.10% | 0.44% | +0.35% |
| 2 | 2025-03-17 | 1.21% | 0.10% | -1.12% |
| 3 | 2024-12-17 | — | 1.21% | — |
Full EPSS history (6 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.7 | 2.0 | LOW |
|
1.9 | 6.4 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
low | CVE-2006-1174 low priority: Debian including 1 source packages (shadow), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2006-1174 |
gentoo
|
normal | CVE-2006-1174: 1 GLSA(s) (200606-02), 1 atom(s) (sys-apps/shadow); latest impact normal. | https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=CVE-2006-1174 |
redhat
|
low | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2006-1174 |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2006-1174 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (shadow), 4 status rows across 4 suites (dapper, edgy, feisty, upstream): not-affected 3, needs-triage 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2006-1174 |
Red Hat is aware of this issue and is tracking it via the following bugs: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=193053 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=229194 The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this issue as having low security impact, a future update may address this flaw. More information regarding issue severity can be found here: http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/ The risks associated with fixing this bug are greater than the low severity security risk. We therefore currently have no plans to fix this flaw in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 which is in maintenance mode.
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| debian | shadow | <= 4.0.7 | cpe:2.3:a:debian:shadow:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | shadow | 4.0.0 | cpe:2.3:a:debian:shadow:4.0.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | shadow | 4.0.1 | cpe:2.3:a:debian:shadow:4.0.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | shadow | 4.0.2 | cpe:2.3:a:debian:shadow:4.0.2:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | shadow | 4.0.4 | cpe:2.3:a:debian:shadow:4.0.4:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | shadow | 4.0.4.1 | cpe:2.3:a:debian:shadow:4.0.4.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | shadow | 4.0.5 | cpe:2.3:a:debian:shadow:4.0.5:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | shadow | 4.0.6 | cpe:2.3:a:debian:shadow:4.0.6:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |