Description
Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) 1.1.14 through 1.1.17 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code by causing negative arguments to be fed into memcpy() calls via HTTP requests with (1) a negative Content-Length value or (2) a negative length in a chunked transfer encoding.
Fixed in Linux distributions
Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.
Debian
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian 14 | cups | 1.1.18-1 | — |
| Debian 13 | cups | 1.1.18-1 | — |
| Debian 12 | cups | 1.1.18-1 | — |
| Debian 3.0 | cupsys | 1.1.14-4.3 | DSA-232 |
Public exploits
Exploit or proof-of-concept code for this vulnerability is publicly available, which lowers the bar for attackers. Treat it as a reason to patch sooner.
Exploit-DB 1
- CUPS 1.1.x - Negative Length HTTP Header EDB-22106 · remote · Dec 19, 2002 · verified
Sources: PoC-in-GitHub, Metasploit Framework, Exploit-DB — updated daily. Only links are listed; no exploit code is hosted here.
Advisories 1
- DSA-232 cupsys - several vulnerabilities Debian Security (DSA / DLA) · Mar 9, 2026
References
- cups-neg-memcpy-bo(10909) vdb-entry
- 7858 third-party-advisory
- 7843 third-party-advisory
- 20021219 iDEFENSE Security Advisory 12.19.02: Multiple Security Vulnerabilities in Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) mailing-list
- 9325 third-party-advisory
- CLSA-2003:702 vendor-advisory
- 7756 third-party-advisory
- 7907 third-party-advisory
- MDKSA-2003:001 vendor-advisory
- 7913 third-party-advisory
- 7794 third-party-advisory
- DSA-232 vendor-advisory
- SuSE-SA:2003:002 vendor-advisory
- http://www.idefense.com/advisory/12.19.02.txt
- RHSA-2002:295 vendor-advisory
- 6437 vdb-entry
- 7803 third-party-advisory
- 8080 third-party-advisory
- 20021219 iDEFENSE Security Advisory 12.19.02: Multiple Security Vulnerabilities in Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) mailing-list