CVE-1999-1022: serial_ports administrative program in IRIX 4.x and 5.x trusts the user's PATH environmental variable to fi...

Security readout for executives and security teams

A legacy IRIX administrative tool could be tricked into running an attacker-controlled program as root. The issue requires local access, but successful abuse could give full control of the host. This mainly matters for organizations still operating old IRIX systems or preserved production equipment. Exposure is likely limited to legacy IRIX 4.x and 5.x systems where the serial_ports administrative program exists and can run with elevated privileges. Modern non-IRIX systems are not implicated by the provided sources. Treat this as high priority only where legacy IRIX systems still exist. The business risk is concentrated but severe: a local account could become root. For most modern environments, priority is inventory confirmation rather than emergency response. Mitigation focus: Identify any remaining IRIX 4.x or 5.x systems in production or lab environments.; Check vendor or archive guidance for official SGI/IRIX remediation details.; Restrict local shell access to trusted administrators on affected hosts..

Prepared

Jul 1, 2026, 09:01 UTC (UTC+00:00)

Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.