CVE-2003-1232: GNU Emacs

Medium severity, CVSS 5.1. EPSS: 3% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

Emacs 21.2.1 does not prompt or warn the user before executing Lisp code in the local variables section of a text file, which allows user-assisted attackers to execute arbitrary commands, as demonstrated using the mode-name variable.

Affected products

• GNU Emacs: version 21.2.1 only

Published 2003-12-31. Last modified 2026-06-16.