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Fencer Vulns
medium 4.1

CVE-2017-12164 json

A flaw was discovered in gdm 3.24.1 where gdm greeter was no longer setting the ran_once boolean during autologin.

published 2018-07-26 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2017-3741

cvss
4.1
version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 32%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A flaw was discovered in gdm 3.24.1 where gdm greeter was no longer setting the ran_once boolean during autologin. If autologin was enabled for a victim, an attacker could simply select 'login as another user' to unlock their screen.

Patch / fix

  • gdm3 Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 3.26.0-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-12164

  • gdm openSUSE Tumbleweed 3.38.2-2.7

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10780-1

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-2017-12164 updated cvss 4.1

gdm: lock screen can be circumvented when autologin is set

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 gdm Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 gdm, gdm-libs, gdm-plugin-smartcard, gdm-plugin-fingerprint, gdm-user-switch-applet Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 gdm
    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 32% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.0 4.1 CVSS:3.0/AV:P/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L
NVD 3.0 6.4 CVSS:3.0/AV:P/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Affected products

  • GNOME gdm

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-592 DEPRECATED: Authentication Bypass Issues
  • CWE-665 Improper Initialization

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.