Quick answers
- Is CVE-1999-0096 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-1999-0096 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-1999-0096?
- Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 5, published 10 December 1996.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Sendmail Sendmail.
- Is there a fix for CVE-1999-0096?
- No fixed version is recorded yet. Check the vendor's advisory in the references below. If you run it, Junglewise drafts a mitigation that fits your setup and applies it once you approve, with senior security engineers behind it.
- How is CVE-1999-0096 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a hosted service.
- Am I affected by CVE-1999-0096?
- Check whether anything you run is named in the advisory. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
The Sendmail 'decode' alias, which is often enabled by default in older installations, allows an attacker to pipe mail through the uudecode utility. Because uudecode can be instructed to output files to specific paths, a remote attacker can send a specially crafted email that overwrites arbitrary files on the local filesystem with the permissions of the Sendmail process. This is a file overwrite vulnerability that does not require authentication. Remediation typically involves removing the 'decode' entry from the mail aliases file.
Affected products
- Sendmail Sendmail
Timeline
- 1996-12-10: disclosed