CVE-2023-53966
Published: 22 December 2025
Summary
CVE-2023-53966 is a critical-severity Use of Externally-Controlled Format String (CWE-134) vulnerability in Sound4 Linkandshare Transmitter. Its CVSS base score is 9.3 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 44.8th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SI-16 (Memory Protection).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2023-53966 is a format string vulnerability (CWE-134) affecting SOUND4 LinkAndShare Transmitter version 1.1.2. The flaw enables attackers to trigger memory stack overflows by supplying maliciously crafted environment variables, particularly through manipulation of the username environment variable with format string payloads. This vulnerability has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), indicating critical severity due to its potential for high confidentiality, integrity, and availability impacts.
Remote attackers require no privileges or user interaction to exploit this vulnerability over the network. By crafting environment variables with format string payloads, they can potentially achieve arbitrary code execution or cause the application to crash, leading to denial of service.
Advisories from Vulncheck and Zero Science Laboratory (ZSL-2023-5744) detail the vulnerability, and a proof-of-concept exploit is available on Exploit-DB (EDB-ID: 51259). No patches or specific mitigation steps are described in the provided information.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-60228
Vulnerability details
SOUND4 LinkAndShare Transmitter 1.1.2 contains a format string vulnerability that allows attackers to trigger memory stack overflows through maliciously crafted environment variables. Attackers can manipulate the username environment variable with format string payloads to potentially execute arbitrary code and crash…
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the application.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
The vulnerability allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to exploit a public-facing network application via crafted environment variables, enabling arbitrary code execution or denial of service, directly mapping to T1190: Exploit Public-Facing Application.
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Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
SI-2 mandates identification, reporting, and correction of flaws like this format string vulnerability to eliminate the root cause.
SI-16 provides memory protections such as stack canaries, ASLR, and DEP to prevent arbitrary code execution from stack overflows triggered by format strings.
SI-10 requires validation of information inputs like environment variables to reject malicious format string payloads before processing.