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Fencer Vulns
critical 9.8

CVE-2019-15846 in the critical feed json

Exim before 4.92.2 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code as root via a trailing backslash.

published 2019-09-06 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2019-6762

cvss
9.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
35.7%
EPSS 35.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 98%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Exim before 4.92.2 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code as root via a trailing backslash.

Patch / fix

  • exim exim 4.92.2
  • exim4 Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.92.1-3

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2019-15846

  • exim4 Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 4.86.2-2ubuntu2.5
  • exim4 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.90.1-1ubuntu1.4
  • exim4 Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS 4.82-3ubuntu2.4+esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2019-15846

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

  • exim openSUSE Tumbleweed 4.94.2-4.2
  • exim Package Hub 15 SP1 4.94.2-bp151.2.4.1
  • libspf2 Package Hub 15 SP1 1.2.10-bp151.4.1
  • exim openSUSE Leap 15.1, openSUSE Leap 15.0 4.88-lp151.4.9.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10746-1openSUSE-SU-2021:0753-1openSUSE-SU-2019:2093-1

  • exim Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +13 more 4.92.2-r0
  • exim Alpine 3.8 4.91-r2

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2019-15846

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • exim Arch Linux 4.92.2-1

arch linux advisories AVG-1037

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-2019-15846 updated cvss 9.8

exim: out-of-bounds access in string_interpret_escape() leading to buffer overflow in the SMTP delivery process

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 exim
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”

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

35.74% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 98% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 9.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 10.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

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.