# CVE-2006-6165: Privilege escalation in n/a

> Local attackers can gain privileges by passing harmful environment variables to processes loaded by the BSD dynamic linker.

- **Severity:** High 7.8 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 29 Nov 2006
- **Updated:** 17 Jan 2025
- **Also known as:** GHSA-9p96-p3x8-3838

## What is CVE-2006-6165?

CVE-2006-6165 is a high-severity vulnerability in Freebsd Freebsd, published on 29 Nov 2006. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

ld.so in FreeBSD, NetBSD, and possibly other BSD distributions does not remove certain harmful environment variables, which allows local users to gain privileges by passing certain environment variables to loading processes.  NOTE: this issue has been disputed by a third party, stating that it is the responsibility of the application to properly sanitize the environment

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2006-6165?

It affects 2 products.


Products: Freebsd Freebsd, Netbsd Netbsd.

## How do I fix CVE-2006-6165?

No fix has been published for CVE-2006-6165 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2006-6165 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2006-6165 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Freebsd Freebsd

- [CVE-2018-17160](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-17160/): Memory corruption in FreeBSD (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2014-3954](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2014-3954/): Memory corruption in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2006-4304](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2006-4304/): Memory corruption in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2006-0226](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2006-0226/): Integer overflow in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2004-0002](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2004-0002/): Denial of service in n/a (critical 10.0)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2006-6165 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2006-6165 is a high-severity vulnerability in Freebsd Freebsd, published on 29 Nov 2006. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2006-6165 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Freebsd Freebsd. 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-2006-6165/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2006-6165/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2006-6165
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2006-6165
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2006-6165

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2006-6165/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.