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Fencer Vulns
critical 9.3

CVE-2008-0888 json

The NEEDBITS macro in the inflate_dynamic function in inflate.c for unzip can be invoked using invalid buffers, which allows remote attacke…

published 2008-03-17 18 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2008-0895

cvss
9.3
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
6.3%
EPSS 6.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 93%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The NEEDBITS macro in the inflate_dynamic function in inflate.c for unzip can be invoked using invalid buffers, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code via unknown vectors that trigger a free of uninitialized or previously-freed data.

Patch / fix

  • info-zip unzip 6.0
  • unzip Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.52-11

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2008-0888

  • unzip RHEL 2.1 5.50-31.EL2.1
  • unzip RHEL 3 5.50-36.EL3

red hat advisories RHSA-2008:0196

  • unzip Azure Linux 3.0 6.0-20
  • unzip CBL-Mariner 2.0 6.0-19

azure linux advisories AZL-35330AZL-6932

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2008-0888 updated

unzip: free() called for uninitialized or already freed pointer

  • Red Hat Desktop version 3 unzip 5.50-36.EL3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (Advanced Server) version 2.1 unzip 5.50-31.EL2.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS version 3 unzip 5.50-36.EL3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES version 2.1 unzip 5.50-31.EL2.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES version 3 unzip 5.50-36.EL3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS version 2.1 unzip 5.50-31.EL2.1
    +2 more products
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS version 3 unzip 5.50-36.EL3 Red Hat Linux Advanced Workstation 2.1 unzip 5.50-31.EL2.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2008:0196

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

6.29% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 93% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 9.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Affected products

  • info-zip unzip

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.