CVE-2016-8637

Exp

A local information disclosure issue was found in dracut before 045 when generating initramfs images with world-readable permissions when 'early cpio' is used, such as when including microcode updates. Local attacker can use this to obtain sensitive information from these files, such as encryption keys or credentials.

Published: 2018-08-01 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2016-8637 is rated Exploit Available (50/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.07%). 2 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-2016-8637

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

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2016-8637

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 2025-08-30 0.05% 0.07% +0.02%
2 2025-08-19 0.06% 0.05% -0.02%
3 2025-03-17 — 0.06% —

Full EPSS history (5 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2016-8637

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.0 3.0 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
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:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
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:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 1.3 3.6 [email protected]
7.8 3.0 HIGH
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
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:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 1.8 5.9 [email protected]
2.1 2.0 LOW
AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Access vector (AV:L)
Requires local access to the target system.
Access complexity (AC:L)
Exploitation conditions are straightforward and predictable.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:P)
Partial confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:N)
No integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:N)
No availability impact.
 3.9 2.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2016-8637

OS Trackers for CVE-2016-8637

vendor priority summary link
debian low CVE-2016-8637 low priority: Debian including 1 source packages (dracut), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-8637
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2016-8637
suse low CVE-2016-8637 severity low: SUSE including 300 source package names (amazon/suse-sles-15-sp1-chost-byos-v20210304-hvm-ssd-x86_64, amazon/suse-sles-15-sp1-chost-byos-v20220127-hvm-ssd-x86_64, …), 331 product×package rows across 46 product lines (HPE Helion OpenStack 8, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 SP1, … (46 product lines)): Known Affected 157, Fixed 156, Known Not Affected 18. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2016-8637/
ubuntu medium CVE-2016-8637 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (dracut), 23 status rows across 23 suites (artful, bionic, cosmic, disco, eoan, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, precise, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial, yakkety, zesty): not-affected 16, ignored 4, DNE 1, needed 1, needs-triage 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2016-8637

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2016-8637

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
dracut_project dracut < 045 cpe:2.3:a:dracut_project:dracut:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2016-8637

URL Tags
http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2016/q4/352 Exploit Mailing List Third Party Advisory
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94128 Third Party Advisory VDB Entry
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2016-8637 Exploit Issue Tracking Third Party Advisory
https://github.com/dracutdevs/dracut/commit/0db98910a11c12a454eac4c8e86dc7a7bbc764a4 Patch Third Party Advisory
cvelogic Threat Intelligence