Buffer overflow in Vixie cron allows local users to gain root access via a long MAILTO environment variable in a crontab file.

Vixie Cron on Linux systems allows local users to set parameters of sendmail commands via the MAILTO environmental variable.

crontab by Paul Vixie uses predictable file names for a temporary file and does not properly ensure that the file is owned by the user executing the crontab -e command, which allows local users with write access to the crontab spool directory to execute arbitrary commands by creating world-writeable temporary files and modifying them while the victim is editing the file.