What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2014-6278: GNU Bash OS Command Injection Vulnerability

• Severity: critical (CVSS 10.0 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: yes — in CISA KEV since 2025-10-02
• EPSS: 99.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2014-09-30 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-78

Description

GNU Bash through 4.3 bash43-026 does not properly parse function definitions in the values of environment variables, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands via a crafted environment, as demonstrated by vectors involving the ForceCommand feature in OpenSSH sshd, the mod_cgi and mod_cgid modules in the Apache HTTP Server, scripts executed by unspecified DHCP clients, and other situations in which setting the environment occurs across a privilege boundary from Bash execution. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2014-6271, CVE-2014-7169, and CVE-2014-6277.

Affected products

• GNU Bash: 1.14.0, 1.14.1, 1.14.2, 1.14.3, 1.14.4, 1.14.5 (+22)

References

• http://jvn.jp/en/jp/JVN55667175/index.html
• http://jvndb.jvn.jp/jvndb/JVNDB-2014-000126
• http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/09/bash-bug-apply-unofficial-patch-now.html
• http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/10/bash-bug-how-we-finally-cracked.html
• http://linux.oracle.com/errata/ELSA-2014-3093
• http://linux.oracle.com/errata/ELSA-2014-3094
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2014-10/msg00004.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2014-10/msg00025.html
• http://marc.info/?l=bugtraq&m=141330468527613&w=2
• http://marc.info/?l=bugtraq&m=141345648114150&w=2
• http://marc.info/?l=bugtraq&m=141383026420882&w=2
• http://marc.info/?l=bugtraq&m=141383081521087&w=2

Get alerted when CVE-2014-6278 or the next vulnerability affects your stack