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Fencer Intel
low 1.9

CVE-2014-3956 json

The sm_close_on_exec function in conf.c in sendmail before 8.14.9 has arguments in the wrong order, and consequently skips setting expected…

published 2014-06-04 12 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2014-3889

cvss
1.9
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.6%
EPSS 0.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 50%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The sm_close_on_exec function in conf.c in sendmail before 8.14.9 has arguments in the wrong order, and consequently skips setting expected FD_CLOEXEC flags, which allows local users to access unintended high-numbered file descriptors via a custom mail-delivery program.

Patch / fix

  • sendmail Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 8.14.4-6

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2014-3956

  • sendmail Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 8.14.4-4.1ubuntu1.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2014-3956

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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-2014-3956 updated cvss 1.0

sendmail: Properly set the close-on-exec flag for file descriptors

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 sendmail Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 sendmail Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 sendmail, sendmail-cf, sendmail-milter Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 sendmail, sendmail-cf, sendmail-milter, sendmail-sysvinit
    affected: no fix available

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

Exploit prediction

0.63% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 50% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 1.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-200 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

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.