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-2016-5425

47
FAUCET Score

CVE-2016-5425 describes a local privilege escalation vulnerability affecting Tomcat packages on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Fedora, CentOS, and Oracle Linux. This flaw stems from weak permissions on the /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tomcat.conf file, allowing local users who are members of the tomcat group to gain root privileges. Rated with a CVSS score of 7.8 (High), the vulnerability has a low attack complexity and can lead to complete compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. While not listed in CISA's KEV catalog, exploit code is publicly available via Metasploit and ExploitDB, and it has garnered community discussion, indicating awareness among threat actors.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
Range not provided by sourceCPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:apache:tomcat:-:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.1

7.8HIGH

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

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
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
3.78%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
88.8%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-24
Model: v2026.06.15
Metasploit: Apache Tomcat on RedHat Based Systems Insecure Temp Config Privilege Escalation · Oct 10, 2016
ExploitDB: EDB-40488 · Oct 10, 2016
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0378 is in the 98th percentile among its peer group of 16,985 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.1 Reddit, 0.2 Bluesky, 0.1 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 (1)

redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7Fixed in: tomcat-0:7.0.54-8.el7_2
View patch

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2016-5425Important

tomcat: Local privilege escalation via systemd-tmpfiles service

Oct 10, 2016

References

legalhackers.com / advisories/Tomcat-RedHat-Pkgs-Root-PrivEsc-Exploit-CVE-2016-5425.html
ExploitThird Party Advisory
packetstormsecurity.com / files/139041/Apache-Tomcat-8-7-6-Privilege-Escalation.html
ExploitThird Party AdvisoryVDB Entry
rhn.redhat.com / errata/RHSA-2016-2046.html
Third Party Advisory
lists.apache.org / thread.html/6b414817c2b0bf351138911c8c922ec5dd577ebc0b9a7f42d705752d%40%3Cissues.activemq.apache.org%3E
exploit-db.com / exploits/40488
Third Party AdvisoryVDB Entry
oracle.com / technetwork/security-advisory/cpuoct2019-5072832.html
Third Party Advisory
openwall.com / lists/oss-security/2016/10/10/2
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
oracle.com / technetwork/topics/security/linuxbulletinoct2016-3090545.html
Third Party Advisory
securityfocus.com / bid/93472
Third Party AdvisoryVDB Entry
securitytracker.com / id/1036979
Third Party AdvisoryVDB Entry