Buffer Overflow in Telnet Daemon tgetent Routing

HIGH (10.0) No Patch (10286 days)
bufferoverflowgnuclibrarytelnetdaemonunix-likesystemsvulnerability

Threat Intelligence

⚠️ CRITICAL GAP - Exploits exist but no detection available
EPSS Score: 6.66% chance of exploitation (percentile: 91%)
🔍 Detection Tools: None available in major open-source tools
⚔️ Exploit Availability: Exploit-DB

How we test →

What is it?

The telnet daemon is a network protocol that allows remote access to a host's command-line interface. This vulnerability occurs due to a buffer overflow in the tgetent routing function, which can be exploited by an attacker to gain root access via the TERMCAP environmental variable.

Am I affected?

This is a vintage vulnerability affecting the telnet daemon on Unix-like systems, specifically those using the GNU C Library (glibc) version 2.0 or earlier. Check with: strings /lib/libc.so.* | grep tgetent

Note: This CVE affects older versions of glibc and should not be considered relevant for modern systems.

Affected Products

GNU Project / GNU C Library

How to fix

To fix this vulnerability, update to a newer version of the GNU C Library (glibc) that includes a patched tgetent function. You can do this by:

  • For Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libgcrypt18
  • For Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS: sudo yum update && sudo yum install glibc
  • For Arch Linux: sudo pacman -S libc

Immediate mitigations:
- Disable telnet service to prevent exploitation.
- Update the system's environment variables to remove TERMCAP.

References