Is CVE-2016-2856 in the CISA KEV catalog?

No. CVE-2016-2856 is not currently on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities list.

What is the CVSS severity of CVE-2016-2856?

CVE-2016-2856 has a CVSS v3 base score of 8.4 (HIGH).

What is the EPSS score for CVE-2016-2856?

CVE-2016-2856 has an EPSS score of 1.08% (61th percentile), estimating the probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.

How do I fix CVE-2016-2856?

Upgrade glibc on debian 11 to 2.21-1 or later. Fixes are available for 4 affected products.

CVE & CISA-KEV Catalog

CVE-2016-2856

HIGH

8.4

CVSS v3

NVD

Description

pt_chown in the glibc package before 2.19-18+deb8u4 on Debian jessie; the elibc package before 2.15-0ubuntu10.14 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and before 2.19-0ubuntu6.8 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS; and the glibc package before 2.21-0ubuntu4.2 on Ubuntu 15.10 and before 2.23-0ubuntu1 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 16.10 lacks a namespace check associated with file-descriptor passing, which allows local users to capture keystrokes and spoof data, and possibly gain privileges, via pts read and write operations, related to debian/sysdeps/linux.mk. NOTE: this is not considered a vulnerability in the upstream GNU C Library because the upstream documentation has a clear security recommendation against the --enable-pt_chown option.

CWE-264Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls

How to fix

Remediation Available

glibcDebian

Fixed in:2.21-1CVE-2016-2856

eglibcUbuntu

Fixed in:2.19-0ubuntu6.8USN-2985-1

libc6Ubuntu

Fixed in:2.19-0ubuntu6.8USN-2985-1

libc6-devUbuntu

Fixed in:2.19-0ubuntu6.8USN-2985-1

Remediation is compiled from vendor and distribution security advisories. Always confirm against the linked source for your exact version and platform.

CVSS v3 Vector

Exploitability

Attack VectorLocal

Attack ComplexityLow

Privileges RequiredNone

User InteractionNone

ScopeUnchanged

Impact

ConfidentialityHigh

IntegrityHigh

AvailabilityHigh

CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Exploit Intelligence

1.08%probability of exploitation in 30 days

61stpercentile

Moderate risk: more likely to be exploited than 61% of all known CVEs.

References

Other references9

Related Vulnerabilities

Other CWE-264 (Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls) vulnerabilities, ordered by exploit likelihood. View all

CVE	Severity	CVSS	EPSS	Exploited	Fix
CVE-2012-1456	Medium	4.3	100%	-	-
CVE-2012-1459	Medium	4.3	100%	-	Fix
CVE-2012-1446	Medium	4.3	100%	-	-
CVE-2012-1443	Medium	4.3	100%	-	-
CVE-2012-1442	Medium	4.3	99%	-	-
CVE-2012-1457	Medium	4.3	98%	-	Fix

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This product uses NVD data but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. EPSS scores courtesy of FIRST.org (https://www.first.org/epss). Source: CISA KEV Catalog. Data as of 2026-05-06.