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tnef EUVDEUVD-2026-90772

| CVE-2026-103679 MEDIUM
Use After Free (CWE-416)
2026-10-01 fedora GHSA-hh3v-7rq2-8fq9
6.5
CVSS 3.1 · Vendor: fedora
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Attack ChainAIDerived

Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain

  1. Access
    Craft TNEF file with multiple message bodies
  2. Delivery
    Deliver via email attachment
  3. Exploit
    Victim extracts file with tnef
  4. Execution
    Trigger use-after-free/double-free
  5. Impact
    Process crash / denial of service

Vulnerability Assessment

Weakness
CWE
ASVS 5.0
V15 - Secure Coding and Architecture Memory lifecycle management
MITRE ATT&CK

2 techniques across 2 tactics: Execution, Privilege Escalation

The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up.

Exploitation Conditions

Requires the victim to extract/process an attacker-supplied TNEF (Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format, 'winmail.dat') file that specifically contains multiple message bodies - this crafted multi-body structure is the trigger condition. Exploitation is limited by required user interaction or automated processing (UI:R): the file must reach a tnef extraction step, typically via an email attachment opened by a user or auto-decoded by a mail gateway. No authentication is needed on the target (PR:N), but there is no network-service listening component - tnef is a client/utility file parser, so the attack depends entirely on getting the malicious file ingested. Impact is confined to crashing the extraction process (availability only); no confidentiality or integrity impact is indicated.

Impact

This is a genuine but modest-severity denial-of-service issue, not a high-priority remote code execution case despite the CWE-416 (use-after-free) and double-free classification. The CVSS 3.1 vector (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H = 6.5 MEDIUM) shows the network reachability comes only through delivering a malicious file that a victim must process (UI:R), and the impact is strictly availability (C:N/I:N) - the stated outcome is an application crash. No EPSS score, CISA KEV listing, or public proof-of-concept was provided in the intelligence, so exploitation status is 'no public exploit identified at time of analysis.' A use-after-free/double-free can sometimes be escalated beyond a crash, but neither the description nor the references claim memory-disclosure or code-execution impact, so treating this as DoS-only is correct. One signal to reconcile: the vendor-supplied A:H (high availability impact) is generous for a transient crash of a per-invocation command-line extraction utility - in practice the failure affects only the single parsing process, so real availability impact is closer to A:L; verify against how tnef is deployed (interactive vs. automated mail-gateway pipeline) before prioritizing.

Exploit ScenarioDerived

An attacker crafts a malicious winmail.dat / TNEF file containing multiple message bodies and emails it to a victim or feeds it into an automated mail-processing pipeline. When the recipient or server extracts the attachment with tnef, improper memory management triggers a use-after-free and double-free, crashing the extraction process and denying that extraction. No public exploit code was identified, and successful triggering requires the victim to actually process the attacker-supplied file (UI:R).

This Month Plan within 30 days. Why: MEDIUM severity (CVSS 4.0-6.9).
No patch listed yet 0.3% exploitation probability (EPSS)

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AnalysisAIv1 – Oct 01, 2026

Extracting a specially crafted Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF, "winmail.dat") file that contains multiple message bodies can crash the tnef utility through a use-after-free and double-free in its memory handling. The flaw is remotely reachable without credentials (PR:N), but exploitation depends on the malicious file actually reaching a tnef parsing step, which requires user interaction such as opening an email attachment or an automated mail gateway decoding it (UI:R). Impact is confined to availability - our independent assessment rates this as a modest-severity denial of service (A:L) rather than the vendor's higher 6.5 score, and no public exploit code and no confirmed active exploitation were identified at time of analysis.

RemediationAI

No vendor-released patch or fixed version was identified at time of analysis, so remediation should focus on reducing exposure until an upstream fix and distribution update appear; track https://github.com/verdammelt/tnef and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2544477 for the patch, and apply the updated package as soon as it is published. As compensating controls, disable automatic decoding or extraction of "winmail.dat"/TNEF attachments in mail gateways and clients so that attack files are never parsed automatically, and strip or quarantine TNEF attachments at the mail boundary - the trade-off is that legitimate Outlook rich-text formatting, embedded objects, and calendar/vCard data carried in TNEF will be lost for recipients. Where tnef extraction must remain available, run it as an unprivileged user inside a sandbox or container with strict memory and CPU limits and no access to sensitive mounts, so that a crash from the use-after-free or double-free is contained rather than disruptive; this does not fix the underlying memory bug but bounds its effect. Users should also be trained not to open unexpected winmail.dat attachments, and any mail-processing pipeline that invokes tnef on untrusted input should be treated as an availability risk and rate-limited or isolated accordingly.

Affects your stack

Find out whether the stacks and servers you run are on an affected version.

Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.

Technical ContextAI · show details

TNEF is Microsoft's proprietary encapsulation format used by Outlook to ship rich message content as a "winmail.dat" attachment over MIME transports. The affected component is the open-source tnef command-line extractor (upstream repository github.com/verdammelt/tnef), typically written in C, which parses the TNEF stream and reconstructs the encapsulated message bodies and attachments. The root cause is CWE-416 (use-after-free): when a TNEF file declares multiple message body attributes, the parser's memory management for those bodies is mishandled, so a buffer is released and later dereferenced, and in some paths the same allocation is freed twice. This class of memory-corruption bug is trigged by malformed or unusual structural input rather than by a logic error in authentication or protocol handling, which is why the impact here is process crash (availability) rather than code execution in the assessed scenario. No CPE strings were supplied in the intelligence feed, but the Fedora packaging relationship and the Red Hat advisories indicate the vulnerable utility is distributed through Red Hat/Fedora channels.

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  • Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources

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Severity by source

Vendor (fedora) PRIMARY 6.5 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
vuln.today AI 4.3 MEDIUM

File delivered remotely but requires victim processing (UI:R); crash affects only the single per-invocation extraction process, so A:L rather than the vendor's A:H; no C/I impact.

3.1 AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
4.0 AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Primary rating from Vendor (fedora).

CVSS VectorVendor: fedora

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
Required
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

DescriptionCVE.org

A flaw was found in tnef. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by providing a specially crafted Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF) file containing multiple message bodies. During extraction, improper memory management triggers a use-after-free and double-free condition, causing the application to crash and resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS).

Threat Intelligence Overview

EPSS Score
0.3%
Top 80% exploitable
Prevalence
Medium
niche winmail.dat decoder, but widely packaged across Linux distros and mail gateways
Data Quality
7 sources
Confidence: High

How this decision was reached

The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.

SignalValue
Severity MEDIUM
CISA KEV No
Public POC No
EPSS 0.3%
Patch available No
Active threat No
Deciding rule
MEDIUM severity (CVSS 4.0-6.9)
What every action level means
Emergency Immediate action required. Criteria: CRITICAL + in CISA KEV (actively exploited) without patch, OR CRITICAL + EPSS > 30% without patch, OR CRITICAL + active threat signals without patch.
Act Now Prioritize within 24-48h. Criteria: in KEV with patch available, OR CRITICAL + public POC, OR HIGH + EPSS > 10%, OR CRITICAL + active threat, OR any CRITICAL severity.
This Week Schedule remediation this week. Criteria: HIGH severity (CVSS 7.0-8.9). Patch within normal change window.
This Month Plan within 30 days. Criteria: MEDIUM severity (CVSS 4.0-6.9), lower exploitation probability. Include in regular patch cycle.
Monitor Track and reassess. Criteria: LOW severity (CVSS 0.1-3.9), minimal exploitation risk. No immediate action needed.

SSVC AssessmentENISA

SSVC Decision· derived
Scheduled
Exploitation
None
System Exposure· derived
Open
Automatable
No
Human Impact· derived
Medium
Technical Impact
Partial

Priority Score

32
Low Medium High Critical
KEV: 0
EPSS: 0
CVSS: +32
PoC: 0
Weaponized: 0
Threat intel: 0
Gov advisory: 0

Attack Technique

Use-after-free vulnerabilities occur when a program continues to access memory through a pointer after that memory has been deallocated.

Memory corruption occurs when a program writes data beyond the boundaries of allocated memory regions or accesses memory in unintended ways, violating the integrity of the process's address space.

Denial of Service attacks render applications or systems unavailable by overwhelming resources or triggering failure conditions.

Affected Products (CPE)CVE.org

cpe:2.3:a:tnef_project:tnef:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

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