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Fencer Vulns
critical 10.0

CVE-2003-0161 in the critical feed json

The prescan() function in the address parser (parseaddr.c) in Sendmail before 8.12.9 does not properly handle certain conversions from char…

published 2003-04-01 23 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2003-0157

cvss
10.0
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
38.8%
EPSS 38.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 98%
public exploits
2
Exploit-DB

Summary

The prescan() function in the address parser (parseaddr.c) in Sendmail before 8.12.9 does not properly handle certain conversions from char and int types, which can cause a length check to be disabled when Sendmail misinterprets an input value as a special "NOCHAR" control value, allowing attackers to cause a denial of service and possibly execute arbitrary code via a buffer overflow attack using messages, a different vulnerability than CVE-2002-1337.

Patch / fix

  • sendmail Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 8.12.9-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2003-0161

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-2003-0161 updated

security flaw

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES version 2.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS version 2.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2003:121
  • Red Hat Linux 6.2 Red Hat Linux 7.0 Red Hat Linux 7.1 Red Hat Linux 7.2 Red Hat Linux 7.3 Red Hat Linux 8.0
    +1 more products
    Red Hat Linux 9
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2003:120
  • Red Hat Linux Advanced Workstation 2.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2003:121

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-22442)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

38.79% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 98% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-22442 Sendmail 8.11.6 - Address Prescan Memory Corruption local, 2003-03-29
  • EDB-24 Sendmail 8.12.8 (BSD) - 'Prescan()' Remote Command Execution remote, 2003-04-30

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
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.