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Fencer Vulns
medium 4.6

CVE-2003-0124 json

man before 1.5l allows attackers to execute arbitrary code via a malformed man file with improper quotes, which causes the my_xsprintf func…

published 2003-03-18 23 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2003-0120

cvss
4.6
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.5%
EPSS 1.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 74%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB

Summary

man before 1.5l allows attackers to execute arbitrary code via a malformed man file with improper quotes, which causes the my_xsprintf function to return a string with the value "unsafe," which is then executed as a program via a system call if it is in the search path of the user who runs man.

Patch / fix

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2003-0124 updated

security flaw

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES version 2.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS version 2.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2003:134
  • Red Hat Linux 7.1 Red Hat Linux 7.2 Red Hat Linux 7.3 Red Hat Linux 8.0
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2003:133
  • Red Hat Linux Advanced Workstation 2.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2003:134

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (EDB-22344)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

1.51% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 74% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-22344 Man Program 1.5 - Unsafe Return Value Command Execution local, 2003-03-11
  • securityfocus.com http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/7066 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 4.6 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.