CVE-2002-1160: Red Hat Linux

High severity, CVSS 7.2. EPSS: 0.4% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

The default configuration of the pam_xauth module forwards MIT-Magic-Cookies to new X sessions, which could allow local users to gain root privileges by stealing the cookies from a temporary .xauth file, which is created with the original user's credentials after root uses su.

Affected products

• Red Hat Linux: version 7.1 only; version 7.2 only; version 7.3 only; version 8.0 only

Published 2003-02-19. Last modified 2026-06-16.