CVE-2001-1178
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 · uneditedBuffer overflow in xman allows local users to gain privileges via a long MANPATH environment 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 · moderate confidenceBuffer overflow vulnerability in xman (X11 manual page viewer) allows local privilege escalation through a specially crafted long MANPATH environment variable. The application fails to properly bounds-check the MANPATH input before copying it into a fixed-size buffer, enabling an attacker to overwrite return addresses and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the xman process.
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= 3.3.2CVSS 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 checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Verify xman is installedRun 'which xman' or check if /usr/bin/xman or /usr/X11R6/bin/xman existsAffected if xman binary is present on the system
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Check Xfree86 X11R6 versionRun 'X -version' or check /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config/..version file, or query the RPM package with 'rpm -q XFree86' if using RPM-based distroAffected if version is Xfree86 X11r6 exactly 3.3.2
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Confirm MANPATH environment variable usageRun 'echo $MANPATH' to see if MANPATH is set in the user environmentAffected if MANPATH variable is defined and accessible to the xman process (this is the typical condition for the vulnerability to be triggerable)
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Verify xman executable permissionsRun 'ls -la $(which xman)' to check if the binary is executable by untrusted usersAffected if xman is executable by users who should not have elevated privileges (the overflow requires xman to be run by the target user)
The system is affected only if running Xfree86 X11r6 version 3.3.2 with the xman binary installed and accessible to untrusted users, since the flaw requires both the vulnerable version and the ability to control the MANPATH environment variable when xman executes.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
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 dataUpdate xman to the latest patched version from vendor repositories, or apply available security patches. If updates are unavailable, restrict executable permissions on xman or implement environment variable filtering through SELinux or system-wide profile configurations.
- Consultation3.0 h
- Implementation4.0 h
- Testing3.0 h
- Review / QA2.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2001-1178 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2001-1178 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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