CVE-2016-1908

critical
Published 2017-04-11 · Modified 2026-05-13
CVSS v3
9.8
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS v2
7.5
VIR risk
9.8

Description

The client in OpenSSH before 7.2 mishandles failed cookie generation for untrusted X11 forwarding and relies on the local X11 server for access-control decisions, which allows remote X11 clients to trigger a fallback and obtain trusted X11 forwarding privileges by leveraging configuration issues on this X11 server, as demonstrated by lack of the SECURITY extension on this X11 server.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
97%
Patch ETA

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: debian — https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-1908

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: secalert@redhat.com — https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1298741

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: secalert@redhat.com — https://anongit.mindrot.org/openssh.git/commit/?id=ed4ce82dbfa8a3a3c8ea6fa0db113c71e234416c

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: secalert@redhat.com — http://www.openssh.com/txt/release-7.2

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: suse — https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2016-1908.html

OS impact

OSVersionStatusFixed in
suse slesaffected
debian debian8.0affected
redhat rhel6.0affected
redhat rhel7.0affected
redhat rhel7.2affected
redhat rhel7.3affected
redhat rhel7.4affected
redhat rhel7.5affected
redhat rhel7.6affected
redhat rhel7.7affected
debian debianbookwormfixed1:7.2p1-1
debian debianbullseyefixed1:7.2p1-1
debian debianforkyfixed1:7.2p1-1
debian debiansidfixed1:7.2p1-1
debian debiantrixiefixed1:7.2p1-1

Application impact

VendorProductVersionsFixed
openbsdopenssh{"endExcluding":"7.2"}7.2

References

CWEs

CWE-287

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.