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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.0

CVE-2009-1889 json

The OSCAR protocol implementation in Pidgin before 2.5.8 misinterprets the ICQWebMessage message type as the ICQSMS message type, which all…

published 2009-07-01 17 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2009-1884

cvss
5.0
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.4%
EPSS 3.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 88%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The OSCAR protocol implementation in Pidgin before 2.5.8 misinterprets the ICQWebMessage message type as the ICQSMS message type, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) via a crafted ICQ web message that triggers allocation of a large amount of memory.

Patch / fix

  • pidgin Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.5.8-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2009-1889

  • pidgin RHEL 4 2.5.8-1.el4
  • pidgin RHEL 5 PRODUCTIVITY, RHEL 5 2.5.8-1.el5
  • finch RHEL 4 2.5.8-1.el4
  • finch RHEL 5 PRODUCTIVITY, RHEL 5 2.5.8-1.el5
  • libpurple RHEL 4 2.5.8-1.el4
  • libpurple RHEL 5 PRODUCTIVITY, RHEL 5 2.5.8-1.el5
  • pidgin-perl RHEL 4 2.5.8-1.el4
  • pidgin-perl RHEL 5 PRODUCTIVITY, RHEL 5 2.5.8-1.el5

red hat advisories RHSA-2009:1139

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-2009-1889 updated cvss 5.0

pidgin: DoS via specially-crafted ICQWebMessage

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS version 4 finch 2.5.8-1.el4, pidgin 2.5.8-1.el4, libpurple 2.5.8-1.el4, pidgin-perl 2.5.8-1.el4, libpurple-tcl 2.5.8-1.el4, libpurple-perl 2.5.8-1.el4 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) finch 2.5.8-1.el5, pidgin 2.5.8-1.el5, libpurple 2.5.8-1.el5, pidgin-perl 2.5.8-1.el5, libpurple-tcl 2.5.8-1.el5, libpurple-perl 2.5.8-1.el5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop version 4 finch 2.5.8-1.el4, pidgin 2.5.8-1.el4, libpurple 2.5.8-1.el4, pidgin-perl 2.5.8-1.el4, libpurple-tcl 2.5.8-1.el4, libpurple-perl 2.5.8-1.el4 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Workstation (v. 5 client) finch 2.5.8-1.el5, pidgin 2.5.8-1.el5, libpurple 2.5.8-1.el5, pidgin-perl 2.5.8-1.el5, libpurple-tcl 2.5.8-1.el5, libpurple-perl 2.5.8-1.el5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES version 4 finch 2.5.8-1.el4, pidgin 2.5.8-1.el4, libpurple 2.5.8-1.el4, pidgin-perl 2.5.8-1.el4, libpurple-tcl 2.5.8-1.el4, libpurple-perl 2.5.8-1.el4 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Optional Productivity Applications (v. 5 server) finch 2.5.8-1.el5, pidgin 2.5.8-1.el5, libpurple 2.5.8-1.el5, pidgin-perl 2.5.8-1.el5, libpurple-tcl 2.5.8-1.el5, libpurple-perl 2.5.8-1.el5
    +1 more products
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS version 4 finch 2.5.8-1.el4, pidgin 2.5.8-1.el4, libpurple 2.5.8-1.el4, pidgin-perl 2.5.8-1.el4, libpurple-tcl 2.5.8-1.el4, libpurple-perl 2.5.8-1.el4
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2009:1139

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

3.38% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 88% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-399 Resource Management Errors

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.