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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2018-16741 json

An issue was discovered in mgetty before 1.2.1.

published 2018-09-13 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-8541

cvss
7.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.3%
EPSS 1.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 71%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in mgetty before 1.2.1. In fax/faxq-helper.c, the function do_activate() does not properly sanitize shell metacharacters to prevent command injection. It is possible to use the ||, &&, or > characters within a file created by the "faxq-helper activate <jobid>" command.

Patch / fix

  • mgetty_project mgetty 1.2.1
  • mgetty Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.2.1-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-16741

  • mgetty Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 1.1.36-2.1+deb8u1build0.16.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-16741

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

  • mgetty SLES for SAP 12 SP3, SLES 12 SP3, SLED 12 SP3 1.1.36-58.3.1
  • mgetty SLE Module for Basesystem 15 1.1.37-3.3.2
  • mgetty SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4 1.1.36-28.3.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2018:2979-1SUSE-SU-2018:2894-1SUSE-SU-2018:2850-1

  • mgetty openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.2.1-6.2

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:11047-1

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-2018-16741 updated cvss 6.7

mgetty: command injection in faxrunq

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 mgetty Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 mgetty, mgetty-voice, mgetty-sendfax, mgetty-viewfax Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 mgetty, mgetty-voice, mgetty-sendfax, mgetty-viewfax
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Allow only trusted users to run the faxq-helper binary, by correctly setting the /etc/mgetty+sendfax/fax.allow configuration file.”

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

Exploit prediction

1.32% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 71% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • x41-dsec.de https://www.x41-dsec.de/lab/advisories/x41-2018-007-mgetty referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 7.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.2 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-78 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command

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.