Home/CVE/The prescan() function in the address parser (parseaddr.c) in Sendmail before 8.12.9 does not properly handle certain co
CVE

CVE-2003-0161

The prescan() function in the address parser (parseaddr.c) in Sendmail before 8.12.9 does not properly handle certain co

The prescan() function in the address parser (parseaddr.c) in Sendmail before 8.12.9 does not properly handle certain conversions from char and int types, which can cause a length check to be disabled when Sendmail misinterprets an input value as a special "NOCHAR" control value, allowing attackers to cause a denial of service and possibly execute arbitrary code via a buffer overflow attack using messages, a different vulnerability than CVE-2002-1337.

HIGH · CVSS 10 EPSS 0.67899
Act now
  • EPSS ≥ 0.50 - high probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
  • EPSS percentile: top 1% of all CVEs by exploitation likelihood
  • Public exploit or PoC is available
  • CVSS base score ≥ 7.0
Sigma rules0 YARA rules0

Affected Products & Versions

3
sendmailall versions
sendmail switchall versions
compaq tru64all versions

Detection Rules (IDS/IPS)

9
et-openGPL SMTP EXPN overflow attemptattempted-admin
snort-communitySERVER-MAIL EXPN overflow attemptattempted-admin
snort-communitySERVER-MAIL VRFY overflow attemptattempted-admin
Open rulesets (ET Open, Snort Community, abuse.ch) link to source. Commercial rulesets are reference-only.

Scoring & Timeline

10
HIGH · CVSS v2 (legacy) · cve@mitre.org
View on NVD
This CVE predates CVSS v3; the legacy v2 score is shown so triage still has a severity to work with.
v2 Vector
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
Published to NVD02 Apr 2003 · 05:00 AM

Vendor Advisories

3
rhsaRHSA-2003:120Critical
rhsaRHSA-2003:121Critical
rhsaRHSA-2003:227Critical
🔗

References & Sources

24
Source URLs (vendor pages, mailing lists, write-ups). Exploit/PoC links are in their own section above to avoid duplication.
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