| Name | CVE-2023-29491 |
| Description | ncurses before 6.4 20230408, when used by a setuid application, allows local users to trigger security-relevant memory corruption via malformed data in a terminfo database file that is found in $HOME/.terminfo or reached via the TERMINFO or TERM environment variable. |
| Source | CVE (at NVD; CERT, LWN, oss-sec, fulldisc, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE bugzilla/CVE, GitHub advisories/code/issues, web search, more) |
| References | DLA-3682-1 |
| Debian Bugs | 1034372 |
Vulnerable and fixed packages
The table below lists information on source packages.
| Source Package | Release | Version | Status |
|---|
| ncurses (PTS) | buster | 6.1+20181013-2+deb10u2 | vulnerable |
| buster (security) | 6.1+20181013-2+deb10u5 | fixed |
| bullseye | 6.2+20201114-2+deb11u2 | fixed |
| bookworm | 6.4-4 | fixed |
| sid, trixie | 6.4+20240414-1 | fixed |
The information below is based on the following data on fixed versions.
Notes
https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#index-t20230408
http://ncurses.scripts.mit.edu/?p=ncurses.git;a=commitdiff;h=eb51b1ea1f75a0ec17c9c5937cb28df1e8eeec56
https://github.com/ThomasDickey/ncurses-snapshots/commit/a6d3f92bb5bba1a71c7c3df39497abbe5fe999ff
https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/04/19/12
6.4-3 upload configures with "--disable-root-environ" to disallow loading of
custom terminfo entries in setuid/setgid programs, mitigating the impact of
the vulnerability.