CVE-2018-16741 Command injection in n/a

What is CVE-2018-16741?

CVE-2018-16741 is a high-severity command injection vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 13 Sep 2018. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

An issue was discovered in mgetty before 1.2.1. In fax/faxq-helper.c, the function do_activate() does not properly sanitize shell metacharacters to prevent command injection. It is possible to use the ||, &&, or > characters within a file created by the "faxq-helper activate <jobid>" command.

Weakness: CWE-78

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-16741?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Mgetty Project Mgetty.

How do I fix CVE-2018-16741?

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-2018-16741 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-16741 in the wild and no public exploit code.

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-2018-16741, DLA-1502-1, DSA-4291-1, GHSA-g9c8-38wc-phh5, UBUNTU-CVE-2018-16741.