THREATPORT/VULNERABILITY/CVE-2017-13090
HIGH SEVERITY

CVE-2017-13090

Wget vulnerability

CVSS
8.8
EPSS
36.6%
EPSS pct
98th
Exploited
No known
The retr.c:fd_read_body() function is called when processing OK responses. When the response is sent chunked in wget before 1.19.2, the chunk parser uses strtol() to read each chunk's length, but doesn't check that the chunk length is a non-negative number. The code then tries to read the chunk in pieces of 8192 bytes by using the MIN() macro, but ends up passing the negative chunk length to retr.c:fd_read(). As fd_read() takes an int argument, the high 32 bits of the chunk length are discarded, leaving fd_read() with a completely attacker controlled length argument. The attacker can corrupt malloc metadata after the allocated buffer.
Affected vendor
Gnu
Affected product
Wget
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weakness type (CWE)
  • CWE-122 — Heap-based Buffer Overflow
  • CWE-119 — Improper Restriction of Operations within Memory Bounds
Published
2017-10-27

Risk analysis

Based on its CVSS vector, this vulnerability is exploitable over the network, low attack complexity, requiring no privileges, user interaction. Successful exploitation leads to high impact to confidentiality, high impact to integrity, high impact to availability.

Its EPSS score of 36.6% reflects a moderate probability of exploitation activity in the wild over the next 30 days, placing it above 98% of all scored CVEs.

Check your external exposure to CVE-2017-13090

  • Confirm whether Gnu Wget is running on any internet-facing host or subdomain.
  • Match discovered service fingerprints against the version affected by CVE-2017-13090.
  • Prioritise remediation if the asset is public, business-critical, or near authentication/payment flows.

How ThreatPort helps with CVE-2017-13090

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