No exploitation reported

CVE-2016-2856

No exploitation reported by the sources we read.

Published2016-03-14
WeaknessCWE-264

Am I affected?

With a domain, we read the version its public headers and pages expose. A distribution build can carry the fix under an older number.

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.

Timeline

dates in UTC

2016-03-1401:59CVE publishedNVD

Observed activity

isMalicious corpus · updated 2026-10-23 18:48 UTC

Indicators tagged with this CVE, per day0 indicators over 7 days

Block these indicators

Firewall list (EDL, text): https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2016-2856?format=txt
CSV export: https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2016-2856?format=csv
TAXII collection of exploited CVEs
The EDL and CSV take an API key on the Pro plan.

Versions per branch

NVD

Canonical ubuntu linux

Branch	Affected	Fixed in	Source
12.4	= 12.04	no fix published	NVD
14.4	= 14.04	no fix published	NVD
15.10	= 15.10	no fix published	NVD

Debian debian linuxversion to verify

Branch	Affected	Fixed in	Source
8.0	= 8.0	no fix published	NVD

as publishedRanges as NVD and OSV publish them; a distribution’s build can be fixed under an older number.

Fix

No fix published by the sources we read yet. NVD record

Detection

Nuclei template: none so far
Exploit-DB: no entry
Proof-of-concept repositories: none listed

Sources

NVDCVSS 3.08.4read 2026-10-23
NVDCVSS 2.07.2read 2026-10-23
NVDweakness (CWE)CWE-264read 2026-10-23
FIRST EPSSEPSS score1.0 %2026-10-22

Technical details

CVSS v3 Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Published: 2016-03-14
Last Modified: 2026-06-17
NVD status: Modified

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2016-2856?

Is CVE-2016-2856 actively exploited?

Active exploitation of CVE-2016-2856 has not been confirmed. Its EPSS score was 1.0% on 2026-10-22, the estimated probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.

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

CVE-2016-2856 has a CVSS v3 base score of 8.4 (HIGH severity), with vector string CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

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