VIR Vulnerability Intelligence Relay

CVE-2016-1531

high
Published 2016-04-07 · Modified 2026-05-06
💬 Discuss on Community ✚ Propose mitigation
CVSS v3
7.0
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS v4 NEW
—
not yet in upstream
VIR risk
8.0

Description

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

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
100%
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-39702 local linux verified
Metasploit · 2016-04-15

Exim - 'perl_startup' Local Privilege Escalation (Metasploit)

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.
EDB-39535 local linux verified
Hacker Fantastic · 2016-03-09

Exim 4.84-3 - Local Privilege Escalation

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.
EDB-39549 local linux verified
Dawid Golunski · 2016-03-10

Exim < 4.86.2 - Local Privilege Escalation

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

Metasploit modules

exploit_unix/local/exim_perl_startup rank 600
Exim "perl_startup" Privilege Escalation
Source fetch failed: fetch_error — view the original via the link above.

OS impact
suse SUSE Affected 1 release
VersionStatusFixed in
— Affected —
debian Debian Fixed 5 releases
VersionStatusFixed in
trixie Fixed 4.86.2-1
sid Fixed 4.86.2-1
forky Fixed 4.86.2-1
bullseye Fixed 4.86.2-1
bookworm Fixed 4.86.2-1

Application impact
VendorProductVersionsFixed
eximexim{"endIncluding":"4.86"}

References

CWEs

CWE-264

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

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