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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.9

CVE-2008-5153 json

Moodle vulnerable to symlink attack

published 2008-11-18 17 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also GHSA-x7r4-26m9-hmgq , EUVD-2022-5741

cvss
6.9
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 33%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

spell-check-logic.cgi in Moodle 1.8.2 allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on the (1) /tmp/spell-check-debug.log, (2) /tmp/spell-check-before, or (3) /tmp/spell-check-after temporary file.

Patch / fix

  • packagist moodle/moodle 1.6.9, 1.7.7, 1.8.8, 1.9.4

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-2008-5153 updated

moodle insecure temporary file use

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

0.39% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 33% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • uvw.ru http://uvw.ru/report.sid.txt referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 6.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
packagist moodle/moodle
>=1.9.0, <1.9.4
>=1.8.0, <1.8.8
>=1.7.0, <1.7.7
>=1.6.0, <1.6.9
1.9.4
1.8.8
1.7.7
1.6.9

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access

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.