CVE20146277

CVE-2014-6277 is a command injection vulnerability that affected the GNU Bourne Again Shell (Bash), a widely used command-line interpreter. This vulnerability was part of a larger set of Bash flaws collectively known as Shellshock. The specific issue in CVE-2014-6277 allowed remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by providing specially crafted environment variables.

The vulnerability arises from how Bash processes function definitions within environment variables. When Bash encounters a function definition followed by code, it would execute the code even if the function was not called. Attackers could exploit this by embedding malicious commands within these function definitions. These commands could then be executed with the privileges of the Bash process.

The impact of this vulnerability was significant due to Bash's prevalence on Unix-like operating systems, including Linux and macOS. It could be exploited in various scenarios, such as when Bash was used to handle network requests or other external inputs. Services that passed user-controlled data into Bash environments were particularly at risk.

The vulnerability was patched by the Bash maintainers through software updates. It is crucial for system administrators to apply these updates promptly to mitigate the risk of exploitation. Detecting exploitation often involves monitoring network traffic for suspicious patterns and analyzing system logs for unexpected command executions.