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Fencer Intel
medium 4.3

CVE-2013-0221 json

The SUSE coreutils-i18n.patch for GNU coreutils allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (segmentation fault and cra…

published 12y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2013-0255

cvss
4.3
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
7.2%
EPSS 7.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 94%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB

Summary

The SUSE coreutils-i18n.patch for GNU coreutils allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (segmentation fault and crash) via a long string to the sort command, when using the (1) -d or (2) -M switch, which triggers a stack-based buffer overflow in the alloca function.

Patch / fix

  • coreutils RHEL 6 8.4-31.el6
  • coreutils-libs RHEL 6 8.4-31.el6

red hat advisories RHSA-2013:1652

  • coreutils openSUSE Tumbleweed 8.26-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10390-1

Is CVE-2013-0221 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2013-0221 updated cvss 2.1

coreutils: segfault in "sort -d" and "sort -M" with long line input

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 coreutils
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 6) coreutils 8.4-31.el6, coreutils-libs 8.4-31.el6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node (v. 6) coreutils 8.4-31.el6, coreutils-libs 8.4-31.el6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) coreutils 8.4-31.el6, coreutils-libs 8.4-31.el6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) coreutils 8.4-31.el6, coreutils-libs 8.4-31.el6
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2013:1652

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (EDB-38232)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

7.24% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 94% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-38232 GNU Coreutils 'sort' Text Utility - Local Buffer Overflow local, 2013-01-21
  • build.opensuse.org https://build.opensuse.org/request/show/149348#diff_headline_coreutils-i18n-patch_diff_action_0_submit_0_19 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • bugzilla.novell.com https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=798538 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.