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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.2

CVE-2008-2936 json

Postfix before 2.3.15, 2.4 before 2.4.8, 2.5 before 2.5.4, and 2.6 before 2.6-20080814, when the operating system supports hard links to sy…

published 2008-08-18 18 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2008-2929

cvss
6.2
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.0%
EPSS 1.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 63%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB

Summary

Postfix before 2.3.15, 2.4 before 2.4.8, 2.5 before 2.5.4, and 2.6 before 2.6-20080814, when the operating system supports hard links to symlinks, allows local users to append e-mail messages to a file to which a root-owned symlink points, by creating a hard link to this symlink and then sending a message. NOTE: this can be leveraged to gain privileges if there is a symlink to an init script.

Patch / fix

  • postfix Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.5.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2008-2936

  • postfix RHEL 3 2:2.0.16-14.1.RHEL3
  • postfix RHEL 4 2:2.2.10-1.2.1.el4_7
  • postfix RHEL 5 2:2.3.3-2.1.el5_2
  • postfix-pflogsumm RHEL 4 2:2.2.10-1.2.1.el4_7
  • postfix-pflogsumm RHEL 5 2:2.3.3-2.1.el5_2

red hat advisories RHSA-2008:0839

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-2008-2936 updated

postfix privilege escalation flaw

  • Red Hat Desktop version 3 postfix 2.0.16-14.1.RHEL3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) postfix 2.3.3-2.1.el5_2, postfix-pflogsumm 2.3.3-2.1.el5_2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS version 3 postfix 2.0.16-14.1.RHEL3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS version 4 postfix 2.2.10-1.2.1.el4_7, postfix-pflogsumm 2.2.10-1.2.1.el4_7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) postfix 2.3.3-2.1.el5_2, postfix-pflogsumm 2.3.3-2.1.el5_2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop version 4 postfix 2.2.10-1.2.1.el4_7, postfix-pflogsumm 2.2.10-1.2.1.el4_7
    +4 more products
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES version 3 postfix 2.0.16-14.1.RHEL3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES version 4 postfix 2.2.10-1.2.1.el4_7, postfix-pflogsumm 2.2.10-1.2.1.el4_7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS version 3 postfix 2.0.16-14.1.RHEL3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS version 4 postfix 2.2.10-1.2.1.el4_7, postfix-pflogsumm 2.2.10-1.2.1.el4_7
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2008:0839

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

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. First public exploit (EDB-6337)

Exploit prediction

1.03% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 63% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-6337 Postfix 2.6-20080814 - 'symlink' Local Privilege Escalation local, 2008-08-31

CVSS scores

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

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-264 Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls

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.