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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.8

CVE-2008-2142 json

Emacs 21 and XEmacs automatically load and execute .flc (fast lock) files that are associated with other files that are edited within Emacs…

published 2008-05-12 18 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2008-2139

cvss
6.8
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.7%
EPSS 3.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 89%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Emacs 21 and XEmacs automatically load and execute .flc (fast lock) files that are associated with other files that are edited within Emacs, which allows user-assisted attackers to execute arbitrary code.

Patch / fix

  • xemacs21-packages Debian 12 2009.02.17-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2008-2142

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-2008-2142 updated cvss 4.4

emacs: fast-lock-mode arbitrary lisp code execution

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 emacs, xemacs 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

3.66% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 89% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • thread.gmane.org http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/96903 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 6.8 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

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.