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Not in CISA KEV
MEDIUM severity

CVE-2016-3176 — salt

MEDIUM

CVE-2016-3176 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.6) Improper Authentication vulnerability in salt. A fix is available for salt — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Salt Insecure configuration of PAM external authentication service

Also known asGHSA-v2rp-9cpj-pfw2PYSEC-2017-33
Published
Updated
Affected
2 pkgs
Patched
2 / 2
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Nov 10, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.9%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs59th percentile — riskier than 59% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.46%0.92%1.37%0.2%0.9%May 26Sep 26Nov 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

Where this sits among everything scored

Real-World Exposure

2 pkgs affected
🐍salt🐍salt

Real-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

Salt before 2015.5.10 and 2015.8.x before 2015.8.8, when PAM external authentication is enabled, allows attackers to bypass the configured authentication service by passing an alternate service with a command sent to LocalClient.

Affected Packages

2 total 2 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🐍PyPIsaltall versions2015.5.10pip install --upgrade 'salt==2015.5.10'
🐍PyPIsalt≥ 2015.8&&< 2015.8.82015.8.8pip install --upgrade 'salt==2015.8.8'

Affected Products

1 product · 8 configurations
Application
saltsaltstack
≤ 2015.5.9
7 versions
2015.8.02015.8.12015.8.22015.8.32015.8.42015.8.52015.8.7

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for salt, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update salt to 2015.5.10 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2016-3176 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    Put an independent control in front of the weakness: restrict the affected endpoint or interface to trusted networks, require an additional authentication factor or proxy-level check, and invalidate existing sessions and credentials in case the flaw has already been used.

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.

UbuntuMEDIUM
USN-8153-1Ubuntu

Frequently Asked Questions

Salt before 2015.5.10 and 2015.8.x before 2015.8.8, when PAM external authentication is enabled, allows attackers to bypass the configured authentication service by passing an alternate service with a command sent to LocalClient.
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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CVE-2016-3176: salt — Fixed in 2015.5.10