Tivoli Secureway Policy DirectorApplication · Ibm

CVE-2001-1191

MEDIUM · 5.0 CVSS v2.0 Published 2001-12-11
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
59/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Remotely reachable 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
WebSeal in IBM Tivoli SecureWay Policy Director 3.8 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a URL that ends in %2e.

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

WebSeal in IBM Tivoli SecureWay Policy Director 3.8 suffers from a denial of service vulnerability where specially crafted URLs ending in %2e (URL-encoded period) cause the service to crash. The vulnerability is triggerable remotely with a simple URL request.

MitigationApply vendor patches if available for Policy Director, or implement URL filtering at an upstream proxy/gateway to reject requests ending with %2e. If the product is end-of-life, migrate to a supported solution.

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
Tivoli Secureway Policy DirectorApplication
Affected:= 3.8

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
Network
Complexity
Low
Authentication
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Partial

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

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. Verify Policy Director is installed
    Locate the IBM Tivoli SecureWay Policy Director installation directory or check system services for processes named 'webseald' or 'PolicyDirector'. On Windows, check Add/Remove Programs for 'IBM Tivoli SecureWay Policy Director'. On Unix-like systems, check common install paths like /opt/tivoli or /usr/local/tivoli.
    Affected if The product is not installed - not affected
  2. Confirm installed version is 3.8
    Check the version of Policy Director installed. Look for a version file in the installation directory, or run 'ivman -version' or 'pdadmin -version' if available. Compare the version number to the affected release.
    Affected if Version is anything other than 3.8 - not affected
  3. Verify WebSeal component is enabled
    Check if the WebSeal daemon (webseald) is running. On Windows, look for 'webseald' service. On Unix, run 'ps aux | grep webseald' or check for process listening on typical WebSeal ports (typically 80, 443, or 9080).
    Affected if WebSeal is not running or not installed - not affected
  4. Assess network exposure
    Determine if WebSeal is accessible over the network. Check firewall rules and listening ports (netstat -an | grep LISTEN). Identify if HTTP/HTTPS ports are exposed to untrusted networks.
    Affected if WebSeal is not network-accessible - not affected (though local privilege escalation would still be a concern if attacker has local access)

User is affected if Policy Director version 3.8 is installed, WebSeal component is running, and the service is accessible over a network where malicious URLs can be submitted.

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
Mitigation available No clean upgrade yet — mitigate in the meantime
Mitigation

Apply vendor patches if available for Policy Director, or implement URL filtering at an upstream proxy/gateway to reject requests ending with %2e. If the product is end-of-life, migrate to a supported solution.

Fix this in Tivoli Secureway Policy Director Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation3.0 h
  • Implementation2.0 h
  • Testing3.0 h
  • Review / QA2.0 h
10.0 hours of engineering $1,770
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Scan for this in your stack

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dbcve dependency scanner

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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-2001-1191 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
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