CVE-2017-16921 Command injection in n/a

What is CVE-2017-16921?

CVE-2017-16921 is a high-severity command injection vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 8 Dec 2017. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In OTRS 6.0.x up to and including 6.0.1, OTRS 5.0.x up to and including 5.0.24, and OTRS 4.0.x up to and including 4.0.26, an attacker who is logged into OTRS as an agent can manipulate form parameters (related to PGP) and execute arbitrary shell commands with the permissions of the OTRS or web server user.

Weakness: CWE-78

Which versions are affected by CVE-2017-16921?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Otrs Otrs.

How do I fix CVE-2017-16921?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, and pass arguments to programs as a list instead of through a shell. More about Command injection.

Is CVE-2017-16921 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-16921 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Public exploit code: 1 Exploit-DB entry and 1 proofs of concept on GitHub.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

• CVE-2015-3306 ProFTPD Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2017-16921, GHSA-x9qc-g4w7-x2hf, UBUNTU-CVE-2017-16921.