Grub Legacy 0.97 and earlier stores pre-boot authentication passwords in the BIOS Keyboard buffer and does not clear this buffer before and after use, which allows local users to obtain sensitive information by reading the physical memory locations associated with this buffer
Published Sep 3, 2008
2.1
LOWCVSS 2.0
EPSS 0.33%
Description
Grub Legacy 0.97 and earlier stores pre-boot authentication passwords in the BIOS Keyboard buffer and does not clear this buffer before and after use, which allows local users to obtain sensitive information by reading the physical memory locations associated with this buffer.
Affected products
No data.
- ≤ 0.97
- 0.92
- 0.93
- 0.94
- 0.94-i386-pc
- 0.95
- 0.95-i386-pc
- 0.96
- 0.96-i386-pc
- 0.97-i386-pc
No data.
No Red Hat product state for this CVE.
No package ranges for this CVE.
Remediation
Red Hat statement
Red Hat does not consider this to be a security issue. Since these operations can only be executed by root, no trust boundary is crossed as a result of this behaviour.
Metrics
No CVSS v4.0 score for this CVE.
No CVSS v3.1 score for this CVE.
No CVSS v3.0 score for this CVE.
AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N
This CVE is not in the KEV list.
No CISA SSVC assessment for this CVE yet.
Estimated probability of exploitation in the wild in the next 30 days (FIRST EPSS). As of Oct 1, 2026.
Score over time
2022–2026- EPSS v2
- EPSS v3
- EPSS v4
- EPSS v5
Percentile over time
- EPSS v2
- EPSS v3
- EPSS v4
- EPSS v5
Table of values (9 key points)
Flat stretches are collapsed; showing up to 120 newest points.
| Date | Score | Percentile | Model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 1, 2026 | 0.33% (0.00333) | 24.31th | v5 (v2026.06.15) |
| Jun 15, 2026 | 0.33% (0.00333) | 24.92th | v5 (v2026.06.15) |
| Mar 17, 2025 | 0.07% (0.00065) | 17.50th | v4 (v2025.03.14) |
| Dec 12, 2024 | 0.04% (0.00042) | 5.07th | v3 (v2023.03.01) |
| Mar 7, 2023 | 0.04% (0.00042) | 5.63th | v3 (v2023.03.01) |
| Mar 6, 2023 | 0.95% (0.00950) | 32.28th | v2 (v2022.01.01) |
| Sep 10, 2022 | 0.95% (0.00950) | 30.63th | v2 (v2022.01.01) |
| Apr 1, 2022 | 0.95% (0.00950) | 28.61th | v2 (v2022.01.01) |
| Feb 4, 2022 | 0.95% (0.00950) | 13.46th | v2 (v2022.01.01) |
References (8)
- http://securityreason.com/securityalert/4204 third-party-advisoryx_refsource_SREASON
- http://securityreason.com/securityalert/4206 third-party-advisoryx_refsource_SREASON
- http://www.ivizsecurity.com/preboot-patch.html x_refsource_MISC
- http://www.ivizsecurity.com/research/preboot/preboot_whitepaper.pdf x_refsource_MISC
- http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/495726/100/0/threaded mailing-listx_refsource_BUGTRAQ
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2008-3896 Vendor Advisory
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2008-3896
- https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2008-3896
| Link | Providers | Tags |
|---|---|---|
| http://securityreason.com/securityalert/4204 | third-party-advisoryx_refsource_SREASON | |
| http://securityreason.com/securityalert/4206 | third-party-advisoryx_refsource_SREASON | |
| http://www.ivizsecurity.com/preboot-patch.html | x_refsource_MISC | |
| http://www.ivizsecurity.com/research/preboot/preboot_whitepaper.pdf | x_refsource_MISC | |
| http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/495726/100/0/threaded | mailing-listx_refsource_BUGTRAQ | |
| https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2008-3896 | Vendor Advisory | |
| https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2008-3896 | ||
| https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2008-3896 |
Change history (0)
No recorded changes yet.