Description
centericq 4.20.0-r3 with "Enable peer-to-peer communications" set allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (segmentation fault and crash) via short zero-length packets, and possibly packets of length 1 or 2, as demonstrated using Nessus.
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 ↗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.
Third-party code, not reviewed by us. Public PoCs are sometimes fake or contain malware. Read the code first and run it only in an isolated lab, against systems you are authorised to test.
Exploit-DB 1
- CenterICQ 4.20/4.5 - Packet Handling Remote Denial of Service EDB-26666 · dos · Nov 29, 2005 · verified
Sources: PoC-in-GitHub, Metasploit Framework, Exploit-DB — updated daily. Only links are listed; no exploit code is hosted here.
Advisories 1
- DSA-912-1 centericq - denial of service Debian Security (DSA / DLA) · Mar 9, 2026
References
- centericq-zero-length-dos(23327) vdb-entry
- https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100519
- GLSA-200512-11 vendor-advisory
- 21270 vdb-entry
- http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=334089
- 15649 vdb-entry
- DSA-912 vendor-advisory
- 17798 third-party-advisory
- 17818 third-party-advisory
- 18081 third-party-advisory