CVE-2017-5899

high

Published 2017-03-27 · Modified 2026-05-13

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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

Directory traversal vulnerability in the setuid root helper binary in S-nail (later S-mailx) before 14.8.16 allows local users to write to arbitrary files and consequently gain root privileges via a .. (dot dot) in the randstr argument.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

69%

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-47172 local multiple

bcoles · 2019-01-13

S-nail < 14.8.16 - Local Privilege Escalation

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

OS impact

OS	Version	Status	Fixed in
debian	bookworm	fixed	`14.8.16-1`
debian	bullseye	fixed	`14.8.16-1`
debian	forky	fixed	`14.8.16-1`
debian	sid	fixed	`14.8.16-1`
debian	trixie	fixed	`14.8.16-1`

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions	Fixed
s-nail_project	s-nail	`{"endIncluding":"14.8.5"}`

References

CWEs

CWE-22 CWE-362

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

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