CVE-2012-3440

Exp

A certain Red Hat script for sudo 1.7.2 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on the /var/tmp/nsswitch.conf.bak temporary file.

Published: 2012-08-08 Last update: 2026-04-29 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2012-3440 is rated Exploit Available (50/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.12%). 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-2012-3440

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

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2012-3440

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 2025-07-21 0.04% 0.12% +0.08%
2 2023-03-07 0.89% 0.04% -0.85%
3 2022-02-04 — 0.89% —

Full EPSS history (3 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2012-3440

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.6 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:L/AC:H/Au:N/C:N/I:C/A:C Click to expand
Access vector (AV:L)
Requires local access to the target system.
Access complexity (AC:H)
Exploitation requires uncommon or highly specific conditions.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:N)
No confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:C)
Complete integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:C)
Complete availability impact.
 1.9 9.2 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2012-3440

OS Trackers for CVE-2012-3440

vendor priority summary link
debian unimportant CVE-2012-3440 unimportant priority: Debian including 1 source packages (sudo), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2012-3440
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2012-3440
ubuntu medium CVE-2012-3440 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (sudo), 6 status rows across 6 suites (hardy, lucid, natty, oneiric, precise, upstream): not-affected 6. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2012-3440

NVD evaluator notes for CVE-2012-3440

Comment: Additional information: https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2012-1149.html

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2012-3440

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
todd_miller sudo 1.7.2 cpe:2.3:a:todd_miller:sudo:1.7.2:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat enterprise_linux 5 cpe:2.3:o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2012-3440

cvelogic Threat Intelligence