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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.3

CVE-2023-51765 json

sendmail through 8.17.2 allows SMTP smuggling in certain configurations.

published 2023-12-24 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-56454

cvss
5.3
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.1%
EPSS 1.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 65%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

sendmail through 8.17.2 allows SMTP smuggling in certain configurations. Remote attackers can use a published exploitation technique to inject e-mail messages with a spoofed MAIL FROM address, allowing bypass of an SPF protection mechanism. This occurs because sendmail supports <LF>.<CR><LF> but some other popular e-mail servers do not. This is resolved in 8.18 and later versions with 'o' in srv_features.

Patch / fix

  • sendmail sendmail 8.18.0.2
  • freebsd freebsd 11.0
  • sendmail Debian 12 8.17.1.9-2+deb12u1
  • sendmail Debian 14, Debian 13 8.18.1-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-51765

  • sendmail SLE Module for Package Hub 15 SP5, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 8.15.2-150000.8.12.1
  • sendmail SLE Module for Legacy 12 8.14.9-4.9.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:0743-1SUSE-SU-2024:0742-1

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-2023-51765 updated cvss 5.3

sendmail: SMTP smuggling vulnerability

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 sendmail, sendmail-cf, sendmail-milter Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 sendmail, sendmail-cf, sendmail-milter, sendmail-sysvinit
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 sendmail, sendmail-cf, sendmail-milter Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 sendmail, sendmail-cf, sendmail-milter
    affected: workaround, 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

1.08% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 65% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • youtube.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8KPV96g1To referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-345 Insufficient Verification of Data Authenticity

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.