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Ubuntu 16.04 LTS : Swift Mailer vulnerability (USN-8986-1)

critical Nessus Plugin ID 375863

Synopsis

The remote Ubuntu host is missing a security update.

Description

The remote Ubuntu 16.04 LTS host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the USN-8986-1 advisory.

 Dawid Golunski discovered that Swift Mailer did not properly sanitize e-mail addresses in the mail transport. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to pass extra parameters to the mail command and execute arbitrary code.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Update the affected libphp-swiftmailer and / or php-swiftmailer packages.

See Also

https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8986-1

Plugin Details

Severity: Critical

ID: 375863

File Name: ubuntu_USN-8986-1.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Published: 11/4/2026

Updated: 11/4/2026

Supported Sensors: Nessus Agent, Continuous Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.9

Percentile: 57.15

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 5.9

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2016-10074

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.8

Temporal Score: 8.8

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:libphp-swiftmailer, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:php-swiftmailer

Required KB Items: Host/cpu, Host/Debian/dpkg-l, Host/Ubuntu, Host/Ubuntu/release

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 11/3/2026

Vulnerability Publication Date: 12/28/2016

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2016-10074

USN: 8986-1