CVE-2002-0542

CVE-2002-0542 describes a privilege escalation vulnerability in the 'mail' utility within OpenBSD versions 2.9 and 3.0. The flaw allows local users to gain root privileges by exploiting the 'mail' program's processing of tilde (~) escape characters, even when not in interactive mode, particularly when invoked by cron jobs. This vulnerability carries a CVSS score of 7.2 (High), indicating a local attack vector with low complexity and a complete impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The attacker needs local access to the system to exploit this flaw. While not actively exploited in the wild or on any "Hot Lists," an exploit is publicly available via ExploitDB (EDB-21373). There is no recorded community discussion or media coverage surrounding this CVE.