Security Resilience

CVE-2023-42119

Memory Safety in Exim ≤ 4.96.2

Published
03 May 2024
Modified
03 November 2025
CVSS Score v3 3.1
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.0/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
EPSS Score 0.016 75th percentile
Risk Priority 32 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2023-42119 is a low-severity Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125) vulnerability in Exim Exim. Its CVSS base score is 3.1 (Low).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Data Obfuscation (T1001); ranked in the top 25% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-8 (Security and Privacy Engineering Principles) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

Exim dnsdb Out-Of-Bounds Read Information Disclosure Vulnerability. This vulnerability allows network-adjacent attackers to disclose sensitive information on affected installations of Exim. Authentication is not required to exploit this vulnerability. The specific flaw exists within the smtp service, which listens on…

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TCP port 25 by default. The issue results from the lack of proper validation of user-supplied data, which can result in a read past the end of an allocated buffer. An attacker can leverage this in conjunction with other vulnerabilities to execute arbitrary code in the context of the service account. . Was ZDI-CAN-17643.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1001 Data Obfuscation Command And Control
Adversaries may obfuscate command and control traffic to make it more difficult to detect.
T1001.002 Steganography Command And Control
Adversaries may use steganographic techniques to hide command and control traffic to make detection efforts more difficult.
T1003.002 Security Account Manager Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to extract credential material from the Security Account Manager (SAM) database either through in-memory techniques or through the Windows Registry where the SAM database is stored.
T1003.003 NTDS Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to access or create a copy of the Active Directory domain database in order to steal credential information, as well as obtain other information about domain members such as devices, users, and access rights.
T1003.004 LSA Secrets Credential Access
Adversaries with SYSTEM access to a host may attempt to access Local Security Authority (LSA) secrets, which can contain a variety of different credential materials, such as credentials for service accounts.
T1003.006 DCSync Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to access credentials and other sensitive information by abusing a Windows Domain Controller's application programming interface (API)(Citation: Microsoft DRSR Dec 2017) (Citation: Microsoft GetNCCChanges) (Citati…
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2023-42114Same product: Exim Exim
CVE-2026-40686Same product: Exim Exim
CVE-2025-48822Shared CWE-125
CVE-2023-42063Shared CWE-125
CVE-2025-21905Shared CWE-125
CVE-2026-43048Shared CWE-125
CVE-2024-27382Shared CWE-125
CVE-2024-5159Shared CWE-125
CVE-2026-4462Shared CWE-125
CVE-2023-32206Shared CWE-125

Affected Assets

exim
exim
≤ 4.96.2

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Developer testing and evaluation directly finds out-of-bounds read flaws through static analysis, fuzzing, and dynamic bounds checks.

Secure engineering principles require bounds checking and memory-safe constructs that stop out-of-bounds reads from being introduced.

Process isolation confines the effects of an out-of-bounds read to the compromised process.

Input validation rejects malformed indices or lengths that would otherwise cause reads outside buffer bounds.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

ID.RA-01 partial match
blocks

Vulnerability scanning and recording can discover instances of out-of-bounds reads after code is deployed.

PR.PS-02 partial match
blocks

Routine patching replaces vulnerable code containing out-of-bounds read flaws.

PR.PS-06 partial match
blocks

Secure-development practices such as bounds checking and memory-safe languages directly prevent out-of-bounds reads.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

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References