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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.2

CVE-2002-0638 json

setpwnam.c in the util-linux package, as included in Red Hat Linux 7.3 and earlier, and other operating systems, does not properly lock a t…

published 2002-08-12 24 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2002-0632

cvss
6.2
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 45%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

setpwnam.c in the util-linux package, as included in Red Hat Linux 7.3 and earlier, and other operating systems, does not properly lock a temporary file when modifying /etc/passwd, which may allow local users to gain privileges via a complex race condition that uses an open file descriptor in utility programs such as chfn and chsh.

Patch / fix

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2002-0638 updated

security flaw

  • Red Hat Linux 6.2 Red Hat Linux 7.0 Red Hat Linux 7.1 Red Hat Linux 7.2 Red Hat Linux 7.3
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2002:132

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.53% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 45% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 6.2 AV:L/AC:H/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.