CVE-2012-6123

Chicken before 4.8.0 does not properly handle NUL bytes in certain strings, which allows an attacker to conduct "poisoned NUL byte attack."

Published: 2019-10-31 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2012-6123 is rated Moderate Risk (46.7/100): CVSS Medium severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.43%). Mandatory action: Review affected assets and schedule remediation.

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

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2012-6123

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 0.51% 0.43% -0.08%
2 2025-03-29 0.43% 0.51% +0.08%
3 2025-03-17 0.43%

Full EPSS history (7 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2012-6123

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
6.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
2.8 3.6 [email protected]
5.0 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N 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:N)
No availability impact.
10.0 2.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2012-6123

OS Trackers for CVE-2012-6123

vendor priority summary link
debian low CVE-2012-6123 low priority: Debian including 1 source packages (chicken), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2012-6123
ubuntu medium CVE-2012-6123 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (chicken), 15 status rows across 15 suites (hardy, lucid, oneiric, precise, quantal, raring, saucy, trusty, upstream, utopic, vivid, wily, xenial, yakkety, zesty): not-affected 8, ignored 5, DNE 1, released 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2012-6123

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2012-6123

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
call-cc chicken < 4.8.0 cpe:2.3:a:call-cc:chicken:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
debian debian_linux 8.0 cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:8.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
debian debian_linux 9.0 cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:9.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
debian debian_linux 10.0 cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:10.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2012-6123

cvelogic Threat Intelligence