The sandbox for vim allows dangerous functions such as (1) writefile, (2) feedkeys, and (3) system, which might allow user-assisted attackers to execute shell commands and write files via modelines.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2007-2438 is rated High Exploit Risk (73.7/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 3.50%). Core evidence: 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Mandatory action: 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.
| EDB-ID | Source | Kind | Published | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | nvd_ref | exploit_tag | Exploit-DB ↗ |
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 | 2026-03-26 | 5.85% | 3.50% | -2.35% |
| 2 | 2026-03-02 | 13.79% | 5.85% | -7.94% |
| 3 | 2025-12-19 | — | 13.79% | — |
Full EPSS history (17 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.6 | 2.0 | HIGH |
|
4.9 | 10.0 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
low | CVE-2007-2438 low priority: Debian including 1 source packages (vim), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2007-2438 |
redhat
|
medium | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2007-2438 |
suse
|
high | CVE-2007-2438 severity important: SUSE including 23 source package names (gvim-7.2-8.15.2, gvim-7.2-8.8, …), 31 product×package rows across 8 product lines (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2, … (8 product lines)): Fixed 31. | https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2007-2438/ |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2007-2438 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (vim), 4 status rows across 4 suites (dapper, edgy, feisty, upstream): released 2, needs-triage 1, not-affected 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2007-2438 |
: Successful exploitation requires that the "modelines" option is enabled and the user is tricked into opening a malicious file.
: The vendor has addressed this issue with the following patches: VIM Development Group VIM 7.0- VIM Development Group patch 7.0.234 ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/patches/7.0/7.0.234 VIM Development Group patch 7.0.235 ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/patches/7.0/7.0.235
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| vim_development_group | vim | 7.0 | cpe:2.3:a:vim_development_group:vim:7.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |