Quick answers
- Is CVE-1999-1445 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-1999-1445 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-1999-1445?
- Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 5, published 2 February 1998.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Slackware Linux 3.3, 3.4.
- Is there a fix for CVE-1999-1445?
- 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-1999-1445 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in an operating system.
- Am I affected by CVE-1999-1445?
- Check whether you run Slackware Linux 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 in the imapd and ipop3d daemons included with Slackware 3.3 and 3.4 when shadow password support is enabled. The issue stems from a patch in 'log_lnx.c' that removed a null pointer check for the password structure. A remote attacker can trigger a segmentation fault (SIGSEGV) by providing a specific sequence of invalid USER and PASS commands (e.g., attempting to log in as a non-existent user after a failed login attempt). This results in a core dump which, depending on local file permissions, may contain sensitive data from /etc/shadow, potentially allowing an attacker to retrieve password hashes if they have local access to the resulting core file.
Affected products
- Slackware Slackware Linux 3.3, 3.4
Timeline
- 1998-02-02: disclosed: Initial bug report on Bugtraq mailing list
- 1998-02-02: advisory: NVD publication date