# CVE-2005-1061: Denial of service in n/a

> Attackers can crash the LogWatch parser by injecting specific strings into secure logs, preventing detection of malicious activity.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.0 (`AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 21 Apr 2005
- **Updated:** 7 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2005-1061, GHSA-3qhc-99ww-4gq4

## What is CVE-2005-1061?

CVE-2005-1061 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Redhat Enterprise Linux, published on 21 Apr 2005. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

The secure script in LogWatch before 2.6-2 allows attackers to prevent LogWatch from detecting malicious activity via certain strings in the secure file that are later used as part of a regular expression, which causes the parser to crash, aka "logwatch log processing regular expression DoS."

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2005-1061?

It affects 3 products.


Products: Logwatch Logwatch, Redhat Enterprise Linux, Redhat Linux Advanced Workstation.

## How do I fix CVE-2005-1061?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

## Is CVE-2005-1061 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2005-1061 exists.

Public exploit code:

- Logwatch 2.6 Secure Script - Denial of Service (exploitdb)

## Other vulnerabilities in Redhat Enterprise Linux

- [CVE-2011-1018](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2011-1018/): Command injection in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2002-0165](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2002-0165/): Privilege escalation in n/a (high 7.2)
- [CVE-2002-0162](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2002-0162/): Path traversal in n/a (medium 6.2)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2005-1061 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2005-1061 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Redhat Enterprise Linux, published on 21 Apr 2005. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2005-1061 exists.

Affected product: Redhat Enterprise Linux. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2005-1061/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2005-1061/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2005-1061
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2005-1061
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2005-1061

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2005-1061/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.