CVE-2014-3538 is a denial-of-service vulnerability affecting the 'file' utility before version 5.19, as well as various Debian and PHP distributions utilizing it. The flaw stems from insufficient restrictions on data read during regex searches, allowing remote attackers to trigger excessive CPU consumption through crafted files that induce backtracking in awk rule processing. With a CVSS score of 5.0 (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P), this vulnerability is easily exploitable over the network with low attack complexity, leading to a partial denial of service. There is no evidence of active exploitation, public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB), or significant community discussion or media coverage surrounding this CVE.
| Vendor | Product | Version(s) | CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
<= 5.18CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:a:christos_zoulas:file:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | ||
5.00CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:a:christos_zoulas:file:5.00:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | ||
5.01CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:a:christos_zoulas:file:5.01:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | ||
5.02CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:a:christos_zoulas:file:5.02:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | ||
5.03CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:a:christos_zoulas:file:5.03:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
CVSS version used by this source: 2.0
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.0 Reddit, 0.1 Bluesky, 0.0 Mastodon, and 0.4 GitHub mentions.
No media coverage found for this CVE.
The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.