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CVE-2012-2142

26
FAUCET Score

CVE-2012-2142 is a high-severity vulnerability affecting poppler versions prior to 0.21.4, as well as products like freedesktop, openSUSE, Red Hat, and xpdfreader. It allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands by crafting a malicious PDF with a terminal emulator escape sequence. The attack requires user interaction (UI:R) but has low attack complexity (AC:L), leading to potential high impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:H/I:H/A:H). Despite its age and high CVSS score of 7.8, there is no evidence of active exploitation, public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB), or significant community discussion or media coverage.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
< 0.21.4CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:freedesktop:poppler:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
3.02CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:xpdfreader:xpdf:3.02:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
5.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
6.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
12.2CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:opensuse:opensuse:12.2:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.1

7.8HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
REQUIRED
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
HIGH
Integrity Impact
HIGH
Availability Impact
HIGH
Exploitability Score
1.8
Impact Score
5.9
CvssVersion
3.1

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
2.94%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
85.7%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-25
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0294 is in the 86th percentile among its peer group of 11,615 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.1 Reddit, 0.1 Bluesky, 0.0 Mastodon, and 0.2 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.3 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (3)

susepatch availablevia nvd_reference
View patch
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5Fixed in: poppler
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6Fixed in: poppler

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2012-2142Low

xpdf: Insufficient sanitization of escape sequences in the error messages

Aug 9, 2013

References

cgit.freedesktop.org / poppler/poppler/commit
PatchVendor Advisory
cgit.freedesktop.org / poppler/poppler/commit/NEWS
PatchVendor Advisory
lists.opensuse.org / opensuse-updates/2013-08/msg00049.html
Mailing ListPatchThird Party Advisory
bugzilla.redhat.com / show_bug.cgi
Issue TrackingThird Party Advisory
openwall.com / lists/oss-security/2013/08/09/5
ExploitMailing ListThird Party Advisory
openwall.com / lists/oss-security/2013/08/09/6
ExploitMailing ListThird Party Advisory