CVE-2012-1987 — puppet
Fix: puppetlabs/puppet@0d6d299CVE-2012-1987 is a security vulnerability in puppet. A fix is available for puppet — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Puppet Denial of Service and Arbitrary File Write
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
Real-World Exposure
puppet💎puppetReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects RubyGems packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Unspecified vulnerability in Puppet 2.6.x before 2.6.15 and 2.7.x before 2.7.13, and Puppet Enterprise (PE) Users 1.0, 1.1, 1.2.x, 2.0.x, and 2.5.x before 2.5.1 allows remote authenticated users with agent SSL keys to (1) cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via a REST request to a stream that triggers a thread block, as demonstrated using CVE-2012-1986 and /dev/random; or (2) cause a denial of service (filesystem consumption) via crafted REST requests that use "a marshaled form of a Puppet::FileBucket::File object" to write to arbitrary file locations.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | puppet | ≥ 2.6.0&&< 2.6.15 | 2.6.15bundle update puppet --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | puppet | ≥ 2.7.0&&< 2.7.13 | 2.7.13bundle update puppet --conservative |
Affected Products
puppetpuppetpuppet enterprisepuppetDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for puppet, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update puppet to 2.6.15 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2012-1987 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| CloudForms for RHEL 6 | converge-ui-devel-0:1.0.4-1.el6cf | RHSA-2012:1542 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2012-1987 in your dependencies?
Find it across RubyGems, including transitive dependencies.