CVE-2017-5615
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 · uneditedcgiemail and cgiecho allow remote attackers to inject HTTP headers via a newline character in the redirect location.
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 confidenceCRLF injection vulnerability in cgiemail and cgiecho CGI programs allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary HTTP headers by including newline characters in the redirect location parameter. This can lead to HTTP response splitting attacks, cross-site scripting via injected headers, or cache poisoning.
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 dataall versionsall versionsCVSS 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
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- Required
- Scope
- Changed
- Confidentiality
- Low
- Integrity
- Low
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
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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Locate cgiemail and cgiecho binariesSearch the filesystem for the cgiemail and cgiecho executables using commands like 'find / -name "cgiemail" -o -name "cgiecho" 2>/dev/null' or check common cgi-bin directories (/var/www/cgi-bin/, /usr/local/apache/cgi-bin/, /home/*/public_html/cgi-bin/)Affected if Either cgiemail or cgiecho binary exists on the system
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Verify web server exposureCheck if the identified CGI programs are accessible via HTTP through your web server by attempting to access them directly (e.g., curl -I http://localhost/cgi-bin/cgiecho or http://localhost/cgi-bin/cgiemail)Affected if The CGI programs respond to HTTP requests and are executable via the web server
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Identify usage of redirect parameterReview web application configurations, scripts, or forms that call cgiemail/cgiecho to see if they pass a redirect location parameter (often named 'redirect' or similar) that could be user-controlledAffected if User-supplied input can be passed to the redirect parameter of these CGI programs
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Test for CRLF injection vulnerabilityIf redirect functionality is in use, test by supplying input containing CRLF sequences (e.g., %0d%0a or actual \r\n) in the redirect parameter and observe if arbitrary headers can be injected into the HTTP responseAffected if The CGI program accepts and reflects newline characters in the redirect parameter without filtering, allowing HTTP header injection
Your environment is affected if cgiemail or cgiecho from Cpanel is installed and exposed via web server with redirect functionality that accepts user-controlled input without filtering newline characters.
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 dataApply available patches from the cgiemail/cgiecho vendor, or implement input validation to strip newline characters (\r\n) from user-supplied redirect locations before using them in HTTP responses.
- Consultation2.0 h
- Implementation2.0 h
- Testing2.0 h
- Review / QA1.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2017-5615 — 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-2017-5615 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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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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