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CVE-2018-12029

22
FAUCET Score

CVE-2018-12029 describes a race condition in the Nginx module of Phusion Passenger versions 3.x through 5.x before 5.3.2, affecting Debian and Phusion Passenger products. This vulnerability allows for local privilege escalation when a non-standard passenger_instance_registry_dir is configured with insufficient permissions. An attacker can exploit this by replacing a file with a symlink after creation but before ownership is changed, leading to sensitive files like root's crontab being chowned. With a CVSS score of 7.0 (HIGH), this vulnerability has a local attack vector, high attack complexity, and high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. 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
>= 3.0.0, < 5.3.2CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:phusion:passenger:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
8.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:8.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.0

7.0HIGH

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

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Attack Complexity
HIGH
Privileges Required
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
HIGH
Integrity Impact
HIGH
Availability Impact
HIGH
Exploitability Score
1.0
Impact Score
5.9
CvssVersion
3.0

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
0.28%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
19.8%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-26
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0028 is in the 52nd percentile among its peer group of 1,516 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.1 Reddit, 0.1 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 0.4 InfoSec Media, 0.1 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (2)

rubygemspatch availablevia ghsa
Product: passengerFixed in: 5.3.2
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Ceph Storage 1.3Fixed in: rubygem-passenger

Vendor Advisories (2)

rubygemsGHSA-jjcj-fgfm-9g9rhigh

Phusion Passenger Race Condition Allows Privilege Escalation

May 14, 2022
redhatCVE-2018-12029Important

passenger: CHMOD race condition in nginx_module/ngx_http_passenger_module.c allows for local privilege escalation

Jun 5, 2018

References

blog.phusion.nl / passenger-5-3-2
MitigationVendor Advisory
lists.debian.org / debian-lts-announce/2018/06/msg00007.html
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
pulsesecurity.co.nz / advisories/phusion-passenger-priv-esc
Third Party Advisory
security.gentoo.org / glsa/201807-02
Third Party Advisory