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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.9

CVE-2008-4989 json

The _gnutls_x509_verify_certificate function in lib/x509/verify.c in libgnutls in GnuTLS before 2.6.1 trusts certificate chains in which th…

published 2008-11-13 17 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2008-4968

cvss
5.9
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.9%
EPSS 1.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 79%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The _gnutls_x509_verify_certificate function in lib/x509/verify.c in libgnutls in GnuTLS before 2.6.1 trusts certificate chains in which the last certificate is an arbitrary trusted, self-signed certificate, which allows man-in-the-middle attackers to insert a spoofed certificate for any Distinguished Name (DN).

Patch / fix

  • gnu gnutls 2.6.1
  • gnutls RHEL 5 1.4.1-3.el5_2.1
  • gnutls-utils RHEL 5 1.4.1-3.el5_2.1

red hat advisories RHSA-2008:0982

  • gnutls openSUSE Tumbleweed 3.4.15-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10105-1

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-2008-4989 updated

gnutls: certificate chain verification flaw

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) gnutls 1.4.1-3.el5_2.1, gnutls-utils 1.4.1-3.el5_2.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) gnutls 1.4.1-3.el5_2.1, gnutls-utils 1.4.1-3.el5_2.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Workstation (v. 5 client) gnutls 1.4.1-3.el5_2.1, gnutls-utils 1.4.1-3.el5_2.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2008:0982

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

1.88% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 79% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-295 Improper Certificate Validation

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.