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Unscored USN-2933-1 2 CVEs

exim4 vulnerabilities

Published Mar 15, 2016 · Updated Apr 22, 2026

Summary

It was discovered that Exim incorrectly filtered environment variables when
used with the perl_startup configuration option. If the perl_startup option
was enabled, a local attacker could use this issue to escalate their
privileges to the root user. This issue has been fixed by having Exim clean
the complete execution environment by default on startup, including any
subprocesses such as transports that call other programs. This change in
behaviour may break existing installations and can be adjusted by using two
new configuration options, keep_environment and add_environment.
(CVE-2016-1531)

Patrick William discovered that Exim incorrectly expanded mathematical
comparisons twice. A local attacker could possibly use this issue to
perform arbitrary file operations as the Exim user. This issue only
affected Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2014-2972)

Fixed packages 1

ReleasePackageFixed in
Ubuntu · 14.04 LTS 14.04:LTS exim4 4.82-3ubuntu2.1

Vulnerabilities 2

  • Unscored —

    expand.c in Exim before 4.83 expands mathematical comparisons twice, which allows local users to gain privileges and ex…

  • Unscored —
    CVE-2016-1531 Public exploit

    Exim before 4.86.2, when installed setuid root, allows local users to gain privileges via the perl_startup argument.

References

  • report
    https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2014-2972
  • report
    https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2016-1531