CVE-2008-3908 describes multiple buffer overflow vulnerabilities in Princeton WordNet 3.0, affecting the 'wn' command-line utility. Attackers can achieve arbitrary code execution by supplying overly long command-line arguments, environment variables (WNSEARCHDIR, WNHOME, WNDBVERSION), or a malicious dictionary file. This vulnerability carries a critical CVSS score of 10.0, indicating a network-exploitable flaw with low attack complexity and complete compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Despite its severity, there is no evidence of active exploitation, public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB), or significant community discussion or media coverage.
| Vendor | Product | Version(s) | CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
3.0CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:a:princeton_university:wordnet:3.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
CVSS version used by this source: 2.0
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.0 Reddit, 0.1 Bluesky, 0.1 Mastodon, and 0.4 GitHub mentions.
No media coverage found for this CVE.
The average CVE in this peer group has 0.1 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.
CVE-2008-3908
Jun 11, 2024CVE-2008-3908
Dec 14, 2021Multiple buffer overflows in Princeton WordNet (wn) 3.0 allow context-dependent attackers to execute arbitrary code via (1) a long argument on the command line; a long (2) WNSEARCHDIR (3) WNHOME or (4) WNDBVERSION environment variable; or (5) a user-supplied dictionary (aka data file). NOTE: since WordNet itself does not run with special privileges this issue only crosses privilege boundaries when WordNet is invoked as a third party component.
Sep 2, 2008