Quick answers
- Is CVE-1999-0868 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-1999-0868 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-1999-0868?
- High severity, with a CVSS score of 7.2, published 20 February 1997.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Isc InterNetNews 1.5.1 and earlier.
- Is there a fix for CVE-1999-0868?
- 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-1999-0868 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-1999-0868?
- Check whether you run Isc InterNetNews or UC Berkeley Ucbmail at an affected version. 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 vulnerability exists because the InterNetNews (INN) daemon (innd) passes data from news control messages (such as 'newgroup' or 'rmgroup') to the ucbmail program without sufficient sanitization of shell metacharacters. While INN attempts some filtering, ucbmail lacks its own checks and passes the malicious data directly to a shell for processing. An attacker with the ability to send Usenet messages can exploit this to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the 'innd' process. This occurs before authorization checks like PGP verification are performed. The issue is addressed by upgrading to INN 1.5.1 and applying the security-patch.04 provided by the maintainers.
Affected products
- ISC INN (InterNetNews) 1.5.1 and earlier
- UC Berkeley ucbmail
Timeline
- 1997-02-20: advisory: Original CERT advisory CA-97.08 published
- 1997-04-03: advisory: Advisory revised to include ucbmail vulnerability (Topic 2)