Quick answers
- Is CVE-1999-1161 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-1999-1161 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-1999-1161?
- High severity, with a CVSS score of 7.2, published 3 November 1996.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Hp-Ux 10.x and earlier.
- Is there a fix for CVE-1999-1161?
- 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-1999-1161 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access, in an operating system.
- Am I affected by CVE-1999-1161?
- Check whether you run Hp-Ux 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 'ppl' utility in HP-UX 10.x and earlier is vulnerable to a privilege escalation attack via insecure core dump handling. A local attacker can create a symbolic link from a core file in the current directory to a sensitive system file, such as ~root/.rhosts. By providing a specially crafted, overly long string to the '-o' flag, the attacker triggers a buffer overflow that causes the program to crash. Because the program may be running with elevated privileges or within a world-writable directory, the resulting core dump (containing attacker-controlled data) overwrites the linked file, allowing the attacker to gain root access via services like remsh.
Affected products
- HP HP-UX 10.x and earlier
Timeline
- 1996-11-03: disclosed: Initial public disclosure on Bugtraq
- 1996-11-03: advisory: NVD published date