Secunia Advisory: SA13609

class101 has reported a vulnerability in Netcat for Windows, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a vulnerable system.

The vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error in the “SessionWriteShellThreadFn()” function in “doexec.c” when writing to a pipe connected to a shell process. This can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow by sending specially crafted overly long data to a listening port.

Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code, but requires that Netcat has been invoked with the “-e” command line option.

NOTE: Exploit code has been published on a public mailing list.

The vulnerability has been reported in version 1.1. Prior versions may also be affected.

Solution: Update to version 1.11.


Critical: Moderately critical

Impact: System access

Where: From local network

Solution Status: Vendor Patch

Software: Netcat for Windows 1.x