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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2017-16944 in the critical feed json

The receive_msg function in receive.c in the SMTP daemon in Exim 4.88 and 4.89 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infini…

published 2017-11-25 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2017-8113

cvss
7.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
63.4%
EPSS 63.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 99.2%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB

Summary

The receive_msg function in receive.c in the SMTP daemon in Exim 4.88 and 4.89 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop and stack exhaustion) via vectors involving BDAT commands and an improper check for a '.' character signifying the end of the content, related to the bdat_getc function.

Patch / fix

  • exim4 Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.89-13

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-16944

  • exim openSUSE Tumbleweed 4.94.2-4.2
  • exim Package Hub 15 SP2 4.94.2-bp152.6.4.1
  • libspf2 Package Hub 15 SP2 1.2.10-bp152.5.1
  • exim Package Hub 15 SP1 4.94.2-bp151.2.4.1
  • libspf2 Package Hub 15 SP1 1.2.10-bp151.4.1
  • exim openSUSE Leap 15.2 4.94.2-lp152.8.3.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10746-1openSUSE-SU-2021:0754-1openSUSE-SU-2021:0753-1openSUSE-SU-2021:0677-1

  • exim Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +15 more 4.89.1-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2017-16944

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • exim Arch Linux 4.89.1-1

arch linux advisories AVG-518

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-2017-16944 updated cvss 7.5

exim: infinite loop and stack exhaustion in receive_msg function via vectors involving BDAT commands

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 exim
    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

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. First public exploit (EDB-43184)

Exploit prediction

63.36% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.2% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-43184 Exim 4.89 - 'BDAT' Denial of Service dos, 2017-11-27
  • bugs.exim.org https://bugs.exim.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2201 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 7.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-835 Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition

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.