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Fencer Vulns
high 8.1

CVE-2016-2378 json

A buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the handling of the MXIT protocol Pidgin.

published 2017-01-06 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-3462

cvss
8.1
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.5%
EPSS 2.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 84%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the handling of the MXIT protocol Pidgin. Specially crafted data sent via the server could potentially result in a buffer overflow, potentially resulting in memory corruption. A malicious server or an unfiltered malicious user can send negative length values to trigger this vulnerability.

Patch / fix

  • pidgin Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.11.0-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-2378

  • pidgin Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 1:2.10.9-0ubuntu3.3
  • pidgin Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 1:2.10.12-0ubuntu5.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2016-2378

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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-2016-2378 updated cvss 5.0

pidgin: MXIT get_utf8_string Code Execution Vulnerability

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 pidgin Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 finch, pidgin, libpurple, pidgin-perl, libpurple-tcl, libpurple-perl Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 finch, pidgin, libpurple, pidgin-perl, libpurple-tcl, libpurple-perl
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”

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

2.50% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 84% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 8.1 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.8 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Affected products

  • Pidgin Pidgin

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.