Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
high 7.0

CVE-2017-5899 json

Directory traversal vulnerability in the setuid root helper binary in S-nail (later S-mailx) before 14.8.16 allows local users to write to…

published 2017-03-27 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2017-14974

cvss
7.0
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.0%
EPSS 1.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 62%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB

Summary

Directory traversal vulnerability in the setuid root helper binary in S-nail (later S-mailx) before 14.8.16 allows local users to write to arbitrary files and consequently gain root privileges via a .. (dot dot) in the randstr argument.

Patch / fix

  • s-nail Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 14.8.16-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-5899

  • s-nail Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 14.8.6-1ubuntu0.1~esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2017-5899

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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-2017-5899 updated cvss 7.0

s-nail: privsep helper local privilege escalation

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 mailx Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 mailx Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 mailx
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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. Published
  2. First public exploit (EDB-47172)

Exploit prediction

0.98% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 62% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-47172 S-nail < 14.8.16 - Local Privilege Escalation local, 2019-01-13
  • openwall.com http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/01/27/7 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 7.0 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
  • CWE-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization

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.