Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
medium 4.6

CVE-2008-5076 json

htop 0.7 writes process names to a terminal without sanitizing non-printable characters, which might allow local users to hide processes, m…

published 2008-11-14 17 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2008-5055

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 36%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

htop 0.7 writes process names to a terminal without sanitizing non-printable characters, which might allow local users to hide processes, modify arbitrary files, or have unspecified other impact via a process name with "crazy control strings."

Patch / fix

  • htop Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 0.8.1-2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2008-5076

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-2008-5076 updated

htop does not filter non-printable characters in process names

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

0.42% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 36% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • bugs.debian.org http://bugs.debian.org/504144 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

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-200 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

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.