Mishandling of format strings in ncurses

published 2019-06-15 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also CVE-2019-15548 , GHSA-32v7-ghpr-c8hg , GHSA-g7r5-x7cr-vm3v , RUSTSEC-2019-0006 , EUVD-2021-1524

cvss: 7.5; 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 69%
public exploits: 0; none known

An issue was discovered in the ncurses crate through 5.99.0 for Rust. There are format string issues in printw functions because C format arguments are mishandled.

Exploit prediction

1.24% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 69% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
NVD	3.0	7.5	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
NVD	2.0	6.4	AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:P
GitHub	3.0	7.5	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
GitHub	3.0	9.8	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem	package	affected	fixed in
crates.io	ncurses	<=5.101.0 >=0.0.0-0	no fix listed

Classification

Weakness

CWE-134 Use of Externally-Controlled Format String
CWE-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

References

rustsec.org /advisories/RUSTSEC-2019-0006.html
web, vendor-advisory, advisory
nvd.nist.gov /vuln/detail/CVE-2019-15547
advisory
github.com /RustSec/advisory-db/issues/106
web, report
github.com /jeaye/ncurses-rs/issues/172
web
github.com /jeaye/ncurses-rs
package
nvd.nist.gov /vuln/detail/CVE-2019-15548
advisory
crates.io /crates/ncurses
package

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.

Summary