CVE-2023-29491

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2023-04-14 · updated 2026-10-14
Weakness: CWE-787

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.

Affected products

GNU ncurses: before 6.4 — fixed in 6.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: GNU ncurses 6.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://ncurses.scripts.mit.edu/?p=ncurses.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=eb51b1ea1f75a0ec17c9c5937cb28df1e8eeec56
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/04/19/10
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/04/19/11
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/12/msg00004.html
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/LU4MYMKFEZQ5VSCVLRIZGDQOUW3T44GT/
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20230517-0009/
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT213843
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT213844
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT213845
https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/04/12/5
https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/04/13/4
http://ncurses.scripts.mit.edu/?p=ncurses.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=eb51b1ea1f75a0ec17c9c5937cb28df1e8eeec56

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