What is CVE-2019-9971?

CVE-2019-9971 is a high-severity vulnerability in 3cx Phone System, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 8.8/10. Published 2022-06-07.

How severe is CVE-2019-9971?

High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 8.8 out of 10.

Privilege escalation in 3cx Phone System

CVE-2019-9971

PhoneSystem Terminal in 3CX Phone System (Debian based installation) 16.0.0.1570 allows an attacker to gain root privileges by using sudo with the tcpdump command, without a password. This occurs because the -z (aka postrotate-command) option to tcpdump can be unsafe when used in conjunction with sudo.

Vulnerability class: Privilege Escalation

Published 2022-06-07 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 8.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.017 (76.2th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 76th percentile — 76.2% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.017 · newest: 0.017 · change: 0.000

Affected products

3cx Phone System
3cx Phone System Firmware — versions 16.0.0.1570
Debian Linux

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-269 — Improper Privilege Management

References

www.securusglobal.com/community/2014/03/17/how-i-got-root-with-sudo/ (Third Party Advisory)
www.gosecure.net/blog (Third Party Advisory)
www.gosecure.net/blog/2022/05/31/security-advisory-multiple-vulnerabilities-imp… (Exploit, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2019-9971?: CVE-2019-9971 is a high-severity vulnerability in 3cx Phone System, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 8.8/10. Published 2022-06-07.
How severe is CVE-2019-9971?: High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 8.8 out of 10.