Unauthenticated service crash via unchecked strstr result
Published Jan 8, 2026 · Updated Jan 8, 2026
Unchecked NULL handling in Trend Micro Apex Central 2019 before Build 7190 allows remote attackers to crash MsgReceiver.exe via TCP. The 0x1b5b new-protocol parser passes attacker-controlled data lacking a CRLF delimiter to strstr, then uses its NULL result in pointer arithmetic and triggers an invalid memory access. No authentication or user interaction is required; the crash stops the TCP message receiver on port 20001.
Summary
What happened
Unchecked NULL handling in Trend Micro Apex Central 2019 before Build 7190 allows remote attackers to crash MsgReceiver.exe via TCP. The 0x1b5b new-protocol parser passes attacker-controlled data lacking a CRLF delimiter to strstr, then uses its NULL result in pointer arithmetic and triggers an invalid memory access. No authentication or user interaction is required; the crash stops the TCP message receiver on port 20001.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2025-69259
- Published
- Jan 8, 2026
- Updated
- Jan 8, 2026
- Vendor
- Trend Micro
- Product
- Apex Central
- Classifications
- CWE-120, CWE-346, CWE-476, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Jan 8, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Jan 8, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=2019 (14.0) <Build 7190
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- tm_apex_central_MsgReceiver_msg_1b5b_unchecked_null_retval_dos.pyfunctional · demonstrated
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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