Quick answers
- Is CVE-1999-1449 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-1999-1449 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-1999-1449?
- Low severity, with a CVSS score of 2.1, published 19 May 1997.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Sun Microsystems SunOS 4.1.4.
- Is there a fix for CVE-1999-1449?
- 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-1999-1449 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access, in an operating system.
- Am I affected by CVE-1999-1449?
- Check whether you run Sunos. 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
A denial of service vulnerability exists in SunOS 4.1.4 on Sparc 20 architectures due to improper handling of read operations on the /dev/tcx0 TCX frame buffer device. A local, unprivileged attacker can trigger a kernel panic by executing simple read commands (e.g., 'cat' or 'ls') against the device node. The root cause appears to be a failure in the device driver to handle unexpected access patterns on systems where the TCX hardware may not be present or properly initialized. A suggested workaround is the removal of the /dev/tcx0 device node if the hardware is not in use.
Affected products
- Sun Microsystems SunOS 4.1.4
Timeline
- 1997-05-19: disclosed: Initial disclosure on Bugtraq mailing list.
- 1997-05-19: advisory: NVD published date.