CVE-1999-1270

Medium

Published: 11/07/1998(UTC)Updated: 16/06/2026(UTC)Translated: 18/06/2026(UTC)NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk

0.31%

22th percentile - higher than 22% of all known CVEs

Summary

KMail in KDE 1.0 provides a PGP passphrase as a command line argument to other programs, which could allow local users to obtain the passphrase and compromise the PGP keys of other users.

Risk Assessment

Local users may gain access to sensitive information, leading to potential compromise of PGP keys.

Recommendation

It is recommended to update KMail to a newer version that does not pass PGP passphrases as command line arguments.

Original NVD description (English source)

KMail in KDE 1.0 provides a PGP passphrase as a command line argument to other programs, which could allow local users to obtain the passphrase and compromise the PGP keys of other users by viewing the arguments via programs that list process information, such as ps.