CVE-2018-16301

Publication date 30 September 2019

Last updated 18 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

The command-line argument parser in tcpdump before 4.99.0 has a buffer overflow in tcpdump.c:read_infile(). To trigger this vulnerability the attacker needs to create a 4GB file on the local filesystem and to specify the file name as the value of the -F command-line argument of tcpdump.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
tcpdump	25.10 questing	Not affected
	25.04 plucky	Not affected
	24.10 oracular	Not affected
	24.04 LTS noble	Not affected
	23.10 mantic	Not affected
	23.04 lunar	Not affected
	22.10 kinetic	Not affected
	22.04 LTS jammy	Not affected
	21.10 impish	Not affected
	20.04 LTS focal	Fixed 4.9.3-4ubuntu0.1
	18.04 LTS bionic	Fixed 4.9.3-0ubuntu0.18.04.2
	16.04 LTS xenial	Fixed 4.9.3-0ubuntu0.16.04.1+esm1
	14.04 LTS trusty	Vulnerable

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Notes

mdeslaur

This CVE was incorrectly assigned to libpcap, and then was incorrectly marked as REJECT, but is now a valid CVE for tcpdump.

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
tcpdump	Upstream: 8ab211a

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	7.8 · High
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	None
User interaction	Required
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	High
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	High
Vector	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H