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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2017-16879 json

Stack-based buffer overflow in the _nc_write_entry function in tinfo/write_entry.c in ncurses 6.0 allows attackers to cause a denial of ser…

published 2017-11-22 8 y ago modified 2026-07-23 3 mo ago also EUVD-2017-8051

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.4%
EPSS 2.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 84%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Stack-based buffer overflow in the _nc_write_entry function in tinfo/write_entry.c in ncurses 6.0 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via a crafted terminfo file, as demonstrated by tic.

Patch / fix

  • ncurses Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 6.0+20171125-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-16879

  • ncurses Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS 5.9+20140118-1ubuntu1+esm2
  • ncurses Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 6.0+20160213-1ubuntu1+esm2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2017-16879

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

  • ncurses SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4, SLE Software Development Kit 11 SP4 5.6-93.12.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2017:3183-1

  • ncurses Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +18 more 6.0_p20171125-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2017-16879

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-2017-16879 updated cvss 2.5

ncurses: Stack-based buffer overflow in the _nc_write_entry function

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 ncurses Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 ncurses, ncurses-base, ncurses-libs, ncurses-term Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 ncurses, ncurses-base, ncurses-libs, ncurses-term
    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

2.39% 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 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/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

Classification

Weakness

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.