Buffer Overflow vulnerability in libxlsv.1.6.2 allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code and cause a denial of service via a craft…

published 2023-08-15 3 y ago modified 2026-08-13 2 mo ago also EUVD-2023-42625 , JLSEC-2026-1296

cvss: 6.5; version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 1.3%; EPSS 1.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 71%
public exploits: 0; none known

Buffer Overflow vulnerability in libxlsv.1.6.2 allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code and cause a denial of service via a crafted XLS file to the unicode_decode_wcstombs function in xlstool.c:266.

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-2023-38852 updated 2025-11-21 cvss 6.5

libxls: heap buffer overflow in xls_parseWorkBook() in xls.c

Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
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

1.33% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 71% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

github.com https://github.com/libxls/libxls/issues/124 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
NVD	3.1	6.5	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
OSV	3.1	6.5	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem	package	affected	fixed in
julia	libxls_jll	>=1.6.2+0	no fix listed

Classification

Weakness

CWE-787 Out-of-bounds Write

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.

Summary