CVE-2012-3542 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-264 vulnerability in keystone. A fix is available for keystone — see the affected versions and patch details below.
OpenStack Keystone Allows Remote User Account Creation
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2012-3542 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,567 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
keystoneReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
OpenStack Keystone, as used in OpenStack Folsom before folsom-rc1 and OpenStack Essex (2012.1), allows remote attackers to add an arbitrary user to an arbitrary tenant via a request to update the user's default tenant to the administrative API. NOTE: this identifier was originally incorrectly assigned to an open redirect issue, but the correct identifier for that issue is CVE-2012-3540.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | keystone | all versions | 2012.1pip install --upgrade 'keystone==2012.1' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for keystone, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update keystone to 2012.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2012-3542 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2012-3542 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2012-3542. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| OpenStack Essex for RHEL 6 | openstack-keystone-0:2012.1.2-4.el6 | RHSA-2012:1378 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2012-3542 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2012-3542 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.