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Fencer Vulns
medium 4.6

CVE-2008-1694 json

vcdiff in Emacs 20.7 to 22.1.50, when used with SCCS, allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on temporary fil…

published 2008-04-21 18 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2008-1695

cvss
4.6
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 34%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

vcdiff in Emacs 20.7 to 22.1.50, when used with SCCS, allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on temporary files.

Patch / fix

  • xemacs21 Debian 12 21.4.21-4

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2008-1694

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-2008-1694 updated

emacs insecure /tmp file usage

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 emacs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 emacs
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”

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

0.40% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 34% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 4.6 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

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.