CVE-2004-1617: university_of_kansas lynx Improper Input Validation

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2004-1617 is a medium (CVSS 5.0) Improper Input Validation vulnerability in university_of_kansas lynx. EPSS estimates a 3.75% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 89.8% of scored vulnerabilities. 1 public exploit is recorded.

Timeline

1. 20-02-2005
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 08-08-2024
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

Lynx, lynx-ssl, and lynx-cur before 2.8.6dev.8 allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) via a web page or HTML email that contains invalid HTML including (1) a TEXTAREA tag with a large COLS value and (2) a large tag name in an element that is not terminated, as demonstrated by mangleme. NOTE: a followup suggests that the relevant trigger for this issue is the large COLS value.

• CWE-20Improper Input ValidationThe product receives input or data, but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input has the properties that are required to process the data safely and correctly.