CVE-2003-0161: Compaq TRU64

High severity, CVSS 10.0. EPSS: 38.8% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

The prescan() function in the address parser (parseaddr.c) in Sendmail before 8.12.9 does not properly handle certain conversions from char and int types, which can cause a length check to be disabled when Sendmail misinterprets an input value as a special "NOCHAR" control value, allowing attackers to cause a denial of service and possibly execute arbitrary code via a buffer overflow attack using messages, a different vulnerability than CVE-2002-1337.

Affected products

• Compaq TRU64: version 4.0b only; version 4.0d only; version 4.0d_pk9_bl17 only; version 4.0f only; version 4.0f_pk6_bl17 only; version 4.0f_pk7_bl18 only; …
• HP HP-Ux: version 10.00 only; version 10.01 only; version 10.08 only; version 10.09 only; version 10.10 only; version 10.16 only; …
• HP HP-Ux Series 700: version 10.20 only
• HP HP-Ux Series 800: version 10.20 only
• HP Sis: any version
• Sendmail Sendmail: version 2.6 only; version 2.6.1 only; version 2.6.2 only; version 3.0 only; version 3.0.1 only; version 3.0.2 only; …
• Sendmail Sendmail Switch: version 2.1 only; version 2.1.1 only; version 2.1.2 only; version 2.1.3 only; version 2.1.4 only; version 2.1.5 only; …
• Sun Solaris: version 2.4 only; version 2.5 only; version 2.5.1 only; version 2.6 only; version 7.0 only; version 8.0 only; …
• Sun Sunos: affected versions not specified; version 5.4 only; version 5.5 only; version 5.5.1 only; version 5.7 only; version 5.8 only

Published 2003-04-02. Last modified 2026-06-16.