K16945 : Mailx vulnerabilities CVE-2004-2771 and CVE-2014-7844

Security Advisory Description

• CVE-2014-7844

The expand function in fio.c in Heirloom mailx 12.5 and earlier and BSD mailx 8.1.2 and earlier allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands via shell meta characters in an email address.

• CVE-2004-2771

A flaw was found in the way mailx handled the parsing of email addresses. A syntactically valid email address could allow a local attacker to cause mailx to execute arbitrary shell commands through shell meta characters (CVE-2004-2771) and the direct command execution functionality (CVE-2014-7844).

Impact

A local attacker can cause mailxto execute arbitrary shell commands through shell meta-characters. These attacks require a trusted user with shell access to the system in question.