A NULL pointer dereference was discovered in ifilter_bank of libfaad/filtbank.c in Freeware Advanced Audio Decoder 2 (FAAD2) 2.8.8.

published 2018-12-18 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-12765

cvss: 5.5; version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 1.2%; EPSS 1.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 68%
public exploits: 0; none known

A NULL pointer dereference was discovered in ifilter_bank of libfaad/filtbank.c in Freeware Advanced Audio Decoder 2 (FAAD2) 2.8.8. The vulnerability causes a segmentation fault and application crash, which leads to denial of service because adding to windowed output is mishandled in the LONG_START_SEQUENCE case.

Patch / fix

distros 3

debian ubuntu alpine

faad2 Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.8.8-2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-20198

faad2 Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS 2.7-8+deb8u3build0.14.04.1~esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-20198

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

faad2 Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +15 more 2.9.0-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2018-20198

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Exploit prediction

1.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 68% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

github.com https://github.com/knik0/faad2/issues/23 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
NVD	3.0	5.5	CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD	2.0	4.3	AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness

CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference

References

github.com /knik0/faad2/issues/23
exploit, third-party-advisory
debian.org /security/2019/dsa-4522
vendor-advisory
security.gentoo.org /glsa/202006-17
vendor-advisory
lists.debian.org /debian-lts-announce/2019/05/msg00022.html
mailing-list
seclists.org /bugtraq/2019/Sep/28
mailing-list

Sources

CVE List CVE-2018-20198
NVD CVE-2018-20198

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.

Summary