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CVE-2012-3440

19
FAUCET Score

CVE-2012-3440 describes a local privilege escalation vulnerability affecting sudo 1.7.2 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. A specific Red Hat script allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files through a symlink attack on the /var/tmp/nsswitch.conf.bak temporary file. This vulnerability has a CVSS score of 5.6, indicating a medium severity with high attack complexity but significant impact on integrity and availability. There is no evidence of active exploitation, public exploit code, or significant community discussion surrounding this CVE.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
1.7.2CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:todd_miller:sudo:1.7.2:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
5CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 2.0

5.6MEDIUM

AV:L/AC:H/Au:N/C:N/I:C/A:C

Confidentiality Impact
NONE
Integrity Impact
COMPLETE
Availability Impact
COMPLETE
Access Vector
LOCAL
Access Complexity
HIGH
Authentication
NONE
Exploitability Score
1.9
Impact Score
9.2
CvssVersion
2.0

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
0.43%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
35.6%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-27
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0043 is in the 69th percentile among its peer group of 1,595 CVEs.

Social Chatter

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

redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5Fixed in: sudo-0:1.7.2p1-14.el5_8.2
View patch

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2012-3440Moderate

sudo: insecure temporary file use in RPM %postun script

Aug 7, 2012

References

bugzilla.redhat.com / show_bug.cgi
Exploit
oracle.com / technetwork/topics/security/ovmbulletinjul2016-3090546.html
securityfocus.com / bid/54868