CVE-2012-3406

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Summary

CVECVE-2012-3406
StatePUBLISHED
Assignerredhat
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2014-02-10 18:15:10 UTC
Updated2026-04-29 01:13:23 UTC
DescriptionThe vfprintf function in stdio-common/vfprintf.c in GNU C Library (aka glibc) 2.5, 2.12, and probably other versions does not "properly restrict the use of" the alloca function when allocating the SPECS array, which allows context-dependent attackers to bypass the FORTIFY_SOURCE format-string protection mechanism and cause a denial of service (crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via a crafted format string using positional parameters and a large number of format specifiers, a different vulnerability than CVE-2012-3404 and CVE-2012-3405.

Risk And Classification

Primary CVSS: v2.0 6.8 from [email protected]

AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

EPSS: 0.008690000 probability, percentile 0.752560000 (date 2026-05-04)

Problem Types: CWE-264 | n/a

CVSS v2.0 Breakdown

Access Vector
Network
Access Complexity
Medium
Authentication
None
Confidentiality
Partial
Integrity
Partial
Availability
Partial

AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

NVD Known Affected Configurations (CPE 2.3)

TypeVendorProductVersionUpdateEditionLanguage
Operating System Canonical Ubuntu Linux 10.04 - lts All
Operating System Canonical Ubuntu Linux 11.04 All All All
Operating System Canonical Ubuntu Linux 11.10 All All All
Operating System Canonical Ubuntu Linux 12.04 - lts All
Operating System Canonical Ubuntu Linux 8.04 - lts All
Application Gnu Glibc 2.12 All All All
Application Gnu Glibc 2.5 All All All
Operating System Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 All All All
Operating System Redhat Enterprise Linux 6.0 All All All
Application Redhat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 All All All

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA Na N/a affected n/a Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
Red Hat Customer Portal af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 rhn.redhat.com
oss-security - Re: CVE request: glibc formatted printing vulnerabilities af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 www.openwall.com
USN-1589-1: GNU C Library vulnerabilities | Ubuntu af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 www.ubuntu.com
Bug 826943 – CVE-2012-3406 glibc: printf() unbound alloca() usage in case of positional parameters + many format specs af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 bugzilla.redhat.com
Gentoo Security af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 security.gentoo.org
bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 bugzilla.redhat.com
Red Hat Customer Portal af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 rhn.redhat.com
Red Hat Customer Portal af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 rhn.redhat.com
Red Hat Customer Portal af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108 rhn.redhat.com
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis

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