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SunosOperating system · Sun

CVE-2001-0652

HIGH · 7.2 CVSS v2.0 Published 2001-10-30
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to after 5.9 or later.
See remediation →
77/100
Remediation priority · High
No privileges Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Heap overflow in xlock in Solaris 2.6 through 8 allows local users to gain root privileges via a long (1) XFILESEARCHPATH or (2) XUSERFILESEARCHPATH environmental variable.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis · high confidence

Heap overflow vulnerability in the xlock screen saver utility on Solaris 2.6 through 8 allows local users to escalate privileges to root by supplying an overly long XFILESEARCHPATH or XUSERFILESEARCHPATH environment variable, which triggers heap corruption and enables arbitrary code execution with elevated privileges.

MitigationApply Oracle/Sun patches for this vulnerability, or disable xlock and use alternative screen locking mechanisms. If patches are unavailable for legacy systems, remove or restrict the setuid bit from xlock.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
SunosOperating system
Affected:<= 5.9

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Authentication
None
Confidentiality
Complete
Integrity
Complete
Availability
Complete

AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Locate xlock binary on the system
    Run 'which xlock' or 'find /usr -name xlock -type f 2>/dev/null' to find the xlock executable
    Affected if xlock binary exists on the system
  2. Verify if xlock has setuid permissions
    Run 'ls -la /usr/openwin/bin/xlock' or check the actual path with 'ls -la $(which xlock)' - look for 's' in the owner permissions
    Affected if xlock is setuid root (shows -rwsr-xr-x or similar with owner 'root' and 's' bit set)
  3. Determine the Solaris version
    Run 'uname -r' or 'cat /etc/release' to identify the Solaris version number
    Affected if Solaris version is 2.6, 7, 8, or 9 (output shows 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, or 5.9)
  4. Check if user can control environment variables
    Verify write access to environment by running 'env | grep -E "(XFILESEARCHPATH|XUSERFILESEARCHPATH)"' to see current values
    Affected if User can set or modify XFILESEARCHPATH or XUSERFILESEARCHPATH environment variables before running xlock

A user is affected if xlock is installed with setuid root permissions on Solaris 2.6 through 9 (Sunos 5.9 or earlier), allowing a local attacker to exploit the heap overflow via long environment variable values.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

From vendor data
Upgrade available Upgrade to a release after 5.9
Interim mitigation

Apply Oracle/Sun patches for this vulnerability, or disable xlock and use alternative screen locking mechanisms. If patches are unavailable for legacy systems, remove or restrict the setuid bit from xlock.

Fix this in Sunos Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation4.0 h
  • Implementation4.0 h
  • Testing2.0 h
  • Review / QA2.0 h
12.0 hours of engineering $2,180
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An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $3,488.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2001-0652 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data