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Fencer Vulns
medium 4.4

CVE-2008-4190 json

The IPSEC livetest tool in Openswan 2.4.12 and earlier, and 2.6.x through 2.6.16, allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files and execu…

published 2008-09-24 18 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2008-4173

cvss
4.4
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.1%
EPSS 1.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 66%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB

Summary

The IPSEC livetest tool in Openswan 2.4.12 and earlier, and 2.6.x through 2.6.16, allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files and execute arbitrary code via a symlink attack on the (1) ipseclive.conn and (2) ipsec.olts.remote.log temporary files. NOTE: in many distributions and the upstream version, this tool has been disabled.

Patch / fix

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-2008-4190 updated

openswan: Insecure auxiliary /tmp file usage (symlink attack possible)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) openswan 2.6.14-1.el5_3.2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) openswan 2.6.14-1.el5_3.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2009:0402

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-9135)

Exploit prediction

1.11% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 66% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-9135 Openswan 2.4.12/2.6.16 - Insecure Temp File Creation Privilege Escalation local, 2009-07-13

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 4.4 AV:L/AC:M/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.