CVE-2003-0645

unknown

Published — · Modified —

💬 Discuss on Community ✚ Propose mitigation

CVSS v3

—

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

1.0

Description

man-db 2.3.12 and 2.3.18 to 2.4.1 uses certain user-controlled DEFINE directives from the ~/.manpath file, even when running setuid, which could allow local users to gain privileges.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

20%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-75 local linux verified

vade79 · 2003-08-06

man-db 2.4.1 - 'open_cat_stream()' Local uid=man

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

OS impact

Debian Fixed 5 releases

Version	Status	Fixed in
trixie	Fixed	`2.4.1-13`
sid	Fixed	`2.4.1-13`
forky	Fixed	`2.4.1-13`
bullseye	Fixed	`2.4.1-13`
bookworm	Fixed	`2.4.1-13`

References

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2003-0645

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.