CVE-2008-5394: Debian Shadow

High severity, CVSS 7.2. EPSS: 0.9% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

/bin/login in shadow 4.0.18.1 in Debian GNU/Linux, and probably other Linux distributions, allows local users in the utmp group to overwrite arbitrary files via a symlink attack on a temporary file referenced in a line (aka ut_line) field in a utmp entry.

Affected products

• Debian Shadow: version 4.0.18.1 only

Published 2008-12-09. Last modified 2026-06-16.