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Fencer Intel
critical 9.3

CVE-2014-4877 in the critical feed json

Absolute path traversal vulnerability in GNU Wget before 1.16, when recursion is enabled, allows remote FTP servers to write to arbitrary f…

published 2014-10-29 12 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2014-4796

cvss
9.3
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
39.9%
EPSS 39.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 98%
public exploits
1
Metasploit

Summary

Absolute path traversal vulnerability in GNU Wget before 1.16, when recursion is enabled, allows remote FTP servers to write to arbitrary files, and consequently execute arbitrary code, via a LIST response that references the same filename within two entries, one of which indicates that the filename is for a symlink.

Patch / fix

  • wget Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.16-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2014-4877

  • wget Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 1.15-1ubuntu1.14.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2014-4877

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

  • wget RHEL 6 1.12-5.el6_6.1
  • wget RHEL 7 1.14-10.el7_0.1
  • wget RHEL 6.5 EUS 1.12-1.12.el6_5

red hat advisories RHSA-2014:1955RHSA-2014:1764

  • wget openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.18-2.3

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10263-1

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-2014-4877 updated cvss 4.3

wget: FTP symlink arbitrary filesystem access

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 wget
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client (v. 7) wget 1.14-10.el7_0.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode (v. 7) wget 1.14-10.el7_0.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 6) wget 1.12-5.el6_6.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node (v. 6) wget 1.12-5.el6_6.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2014:1764
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node EUS (v. 6.5) wget 1.12-1.12.el6_5
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2014:1955
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) wget 1.12-5.el6_6.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 7) wget 1.14-10.el7_0.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2014:1764
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server EUS (v. 6.5) wget 1.12-1.12.el6_5
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2014:1955
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) wget 1.12-5.el6_6.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 7) wget 1.14-10.el7_0.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2014:1764

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 (Metasploit auxiliary/server/wget_symlink_file_write)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

39.88% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 98% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • Metasploit auxiliary/server/wget_symlink_file_write GNU Wget FTP Symlink Arbitrary Filesystem Access metasploit auxiliary, normal rank, 2014-10-27
  • github.com https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework/pull/4088 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • community.rapid7.com https://community.rapid7.com/community/metasploit/blog/2014/10/28/r7-2014-15-gnu-wget-ftp-symlink-arbitrary-filesystem-access referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 9.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory

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.