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Fencer Vulns
medium 4.7

CVE-2018-6198 json

w3m through 0.5.3 does not properly handle temporary files when the ~/.w3m directory is unwritable, which allows a local attacker to craft…

published 2018-01-25 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-17959

cvss
4.7
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 33%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

w3m through 0.5.3 does not properly handle temporary files when the ~/.w3m directory is unwritable, which allows a local attacker to craft a symlink attack to overwrite arbitrary files.

Patch / fix

  • w3m Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 0.5.3-36

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-6198

  • w3m Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 0.5.3-15ubuntu0.2
  • w3m Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 0.5.3-26ubuntu0.2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-6198

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

  • w3m SLES for SAP 12 SP4, SLES for SAP 12 SP3, SLES 12 SP4 +3 more 0.5.3.git20161120-161.3.4

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2019:0776-1

  • w3m openSUSE Tumbleweed 0.5.3+git20180125-1.14

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:11504-1

  • w3m Alpine 3.21, Alpine 3.20, Alpine 3.19 +11 more 0.5.3.20180125-r0
  • w3m Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 0.5.3_git20241203-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2018-6198

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org 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-2018-6198 updated cvss 4.3

w3m: insecure temporary files creation when ~/.w3m is unwritable

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 w3m Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 w3m, w3m-img
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 w3m, w3m-img
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

0.40% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 33% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 4.7 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
NVD 2.0 3.3 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access

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.