CVE-2013-0221

Red Hat Enterprise Linux - Denial of Service via Long String to sort Command with -d or -M Switch

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Exploitation Summary

EIP tracks 1 public exploit for CVE-2013-0221. PoCs published by anonymous.

AI-analyzed exploit summary This exploit demonstrates a buffer overflow vulnerability in GNU Coreutils' sort utility by feeding it an excessively long input string, leading to a segmentation fault. The PoC confirms the vulnerability but does not achieve arbitrary code execution.

Description

The SUSE coreutils-i18n.patch for GNU coreutils allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (segmentation fault and crash) via a long string to the sort command, when using the (1) -d or (2) -M switch, which triggers a stack-based buffer overflow in the alloca function.

Exploits (1)

exploitdb WORKING POC VERIFIED
by anonymous · textlocallinux
https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/38232

This exploit demonstrates a buffer overflow vulnerability in GNU Coreutils' sort utility by feeding it an excessively long input string, leading to a segmentation fault. The PoC confirms the vulnerability but does not achieve arbitrary code execution.

Classification
Working Poc 90%
Attack Type
Dos
Complexity
Trivial
Reliability
Reliable
Target: GNU Coreutils (sort utility)
No auth needed
Prerequisites: Local access to the target system · GNU Coreutils with vulnerable sort utility
mistral-large-3 · analyzed Feb 16, 2026 Full analysis →

References (4)

Core 4
Core References
Issue Tracking x_refsource_confirm
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=903464
Vendor Advisory vendor-advisory x_refsource_redhat
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2013-1652.html
Exploit, Issue Tracking x_refsource_confirm
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=798538

Scores

EPSS 0.0724
EPSS Percentile 93.6%

Details

CWE
CWE-20
Status published
Products (3)
opensuse/opensuse 12.1
opensuse/opensuse 12.2
redhat/enterprise_linux 6.0
Published Nov 23, 2013
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026