Skip to content
Fencer Intel
medium 5.0

CVE-2014-9116 json

The write_one_header function in mutt 1.5.23 does not properly handle newline characters at the beginning of a header, which allows remote…

published 2014-12-02 11 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2014-8942

cvss
5.0
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
9.7%
EPSS 9.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 95%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The write_one_header function in mutt 1.5.23 does not properly handle newline characters at the beginning of a header, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a header with an empty body, which triggers a heap-based buffer overflow in the mutt_substrdup function.

Patch / fix

  • mutt Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.5.23-2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2014-9116

  • mutt Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 1.5.21-6.4ubuntu2.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2014-9116

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

  • mutt SLES for SAP 12 SP3, SLES 12 SP3, SLED 12 SP3 1.10.1-55.6.1
  • mutt SLE Module for Basesystem 15 1.10.1-3.3.4
  • mutt SLES for SAP 12 SP3, SLES 12 SP3, SLED 12 SP3 1.10.1-55.3.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2019:1196-1SUSE-SU-2018:2085-1SUSE-SU-2018:2084-1

  • mutt openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.6.2-3.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10198-1

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-2014-9116 updated cvss 2.6

mutt: incorrect use of mutt_substrdup() in write_one_header()

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 mutt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 mutt
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 mutt
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

9.69% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 95% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • bugzilla.redhat.com https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1168463 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • bugs.debian.org https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=771125 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • openwall.com http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/11/27/5 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

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.