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CVE-2016-8972

36
FAUCET Score

CVE-2016-8972 describes a local privilege escalation vulnerability affecting IBM AIX versions 6.1, 7.1, and 7.2, as well as IBM VIOS. A local attacker can leverage a specially crafted command within the bellmail client to gain root privileges. This vulnerability carries a CVSSv3 score of 7.8 (High), indicating a high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability with low attack complexity and requiring local user privileges. While not actively exploited in the wild or on CISA's KEV catalog, a public exploit (EDB-40950) exists, though there is minimal community discussion or media coverage surrounding this CVE.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
6.1CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:ibm:aix:6.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
7.1CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:ibm:aix:7.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
7.2CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:ibm:aix:7.2:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
2.2.0.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:ibm:vios:2.2.0.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
2.2.0.10CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:ibm:vios:2.2.0.10:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.0

7.8HIGH

CVSS:3.0/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
3.0

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
1.38%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
69.4%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-26
Model: v2026.06.15
ExploitDB: EDB-40950 · Dec 22, 2016
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0138 is in the 95th percentile among its peer group of 16,994 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

Remediation records are not available for this CVE.

References

aix.software.ibm.com / aix/efixes/security/bellmail_advisory.asc
MitigationPatchVendor Advisory
exploit-db.com / exploits/40950
securityfocus.com / bid/94979
Third Party AdvisoryVDB Entry
securitytracker.com / id/1037480