CVE-2022-39028

Exp

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.

Published: 2022-08-30 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2022-39028 is rated High Exploit Risk (66/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.40%). 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Public exploit references (Exploit-DB) for CVE-2022-39028

EDB-ID Source Kind Published Link
— nvd_ref exploit_tag Exploit-DB ↗

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2022-39028

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-02-25 0.47% 0.40% -0.07%
2 2026-02-06 0.39% 0.47% +0.09%
3 2025-11-21 — 0.39% —

Full EPSS history (16 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2022-39028

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 3.9 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2022-39028

OS Trackers for CVE-2022-39028

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2022-39028 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (inetutils), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2022-39028
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-39028
suse high CVE-2022-39028 severity important: SUSE including 257 source package names (5.0.0-beta1.2.122:telnet-1.2-150000.3.6.1, 5.1.0.6.40:telnet-1.2-150000.3.6.1, …), 743 product×package rows across 276 product lines (Container suse/manager/5.0/x86_64/server, Container suse/multi-linux-manager/5.1/x86_64/server, … (276 product lines)): Fixed 315, Known Affected 231, Known Not Affected 197. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-39028/
ubuntu medium CVE-2022-39028 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (inetutils), 12 status rows across 12 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 6, released 6. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2022-39028

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2022-39028

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
gnu inetutils <= 2.3 cpe:2.3:a:gnu:inetutils:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
mit kerberos_5 <= 1.0.3 cpe:2.3:a:mit:kerberos_5:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
debian debian_linux 10.0 cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:10.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
netkit-telnet_project netkit-telnet <= 0.17 cpe:2.3:a:netkit-telnet_project:netkit-telnet:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2022-39028

cvelogic Threat Intelligence