Predictive Vulnerability Intelligence.

Product

  • Product
  • Pricing
  • Documentation

Company

  • About
  • Partnerships
  • Blog
  • Support

Legal

  • Terms
  • Privacy
  • Data Licensing

© 2026 FAUCET Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.

CVE-2015-3238

19
FAUCET Score

CVE-2015-3238 is a medium-severity vulnerability affecting the pam_unix module in Linux-PAM before version 1.2.1, impacting various Linux distributions and Oracle products. It allows local users to enumerate usernames or cause a denial of service by providing a large password when direct password access is unavailable. The CVSS score is 6.5, indicating a low-complexity attack with potential for information disclosure (username enumeration) and denial of service. There is no known active exploitation, public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB), or significant media coverage, though it has been discussed in community forums regarding OpenSSH+SELinux.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
<= 1.1.8CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:linux-pam:linux-pam:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
<= 1121CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:oracle:sparc-opl_service_processor:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.0

6.5MEDIUM

CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:L

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
LOW
Integrity Impact
NONE
Availability Impact
LOW
Exploitability Score
3.9
Impact Score
2.5
CvssVersion
3.0

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
2.71%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
84.4%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-24
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0271 is in the 77th percentile among its peer group of 23,684 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.0 Reddit, 0.1 Bluesky, 0.0 Mastodon, and 0.4 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

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

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (3)

redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6Fixed in: pam-0:1.1.1-20.el6_7.1
View patch
redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7Fixed in: pam-0:1.1.8-12.ael7b_1.1
View patch
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5Fixed in: pam

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2015-3238Moderate

pam: DoS/user enumeration due to blocking pipe in pam_unix module

Jun 25, 2015

References

lists.fedoraproject.org / pipermail/package-announce/2015-July/161350.html
lists.fedoraproject.org / pipermail/package-announce/2015-June/161249.html
rhn.redhat.com / errata/RHSA-2015-1640.html
Vendor Advisory
bugzilla.redhat.com / show_bug.cgi
security.gentoo.org / glsa/201605-05
trustwave.com / Resources/Security-Advisories/Advisories/TWSL2015-011
Exploit
trustwave.com / Resources/SpiderLabs-Blog/Username-Enumeration-against-OpenSSH-SELinux-with-CVE-2015-3238
Exploit
openwall.com / lists/oss-security/2015/06/25/13
oracle.com / technetwork/security-advisory/cpuapr2016v3-2985753.html
securityfocus.com / bid/75428
ubuntu.com / usn/USN-2935-1
ubuntu.com / usn/USN-2935-2
ubuntu.com / usn/USN-2935-3