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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.8

CVE-2018-14779 json

A buffer overflow issue was discovered in the Yubico-Piv 1.5.0 smartcard driver.

published 2018-08-15 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-6663

cvss
6.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 42%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A buffer overflow issue was discovered in the Yubico-Piv 1.5.0 smartcard driver. The file lib/ykpiv.c contains the following code in the function `ykpiv_transfer_data()`: {% highlight c %} if(*out_len + recv_len - 2 > max_out) { fprintf(stderr, "Output buffer to small, wanted to write %lu, max was %lu.", *out_len + recv_len - 2, max_out); } if(out_data) { memcpy(out_data, data, recv_len - 2); out_data += recv_len - 2; *out_len += recv_len - 2; } {% endhighlight %} -- it is clearly checked whether the buffer is big enough to hold the data copied using `memcpy()`, but no error handling happens to avoid the `memcpy()` in such cases. This code path can be triggered with malicious data coming from a smartcard.

Patch / fix

  • yubico piv_manager 1.4.2
  • yubico piv_tool 1.6.0
  • yubico-piv-tool Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.6.1-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-14779

  • yubico-piv-tool Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 1.4.2-2ubuntu0.1
  • yubico-piv-tool Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 1.0.3-1ubuntu0.1~esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-14779

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

  • yubico-piv-tool SLE Module for Basesystem 15 1.5.0-3.3.33

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2019:1123-1

  • yubico-piv-tool openSUSE Tumbleweed 2.2.0-1.5
  • yubico-piv-tool openSUSE Leap 15.0 1.5.0-lp150.2.3.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:11537-1openSUSE-SU-2019:1341-1

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-2018-14779 updated cvss 6.4

yubico-piv-tool: Unchecked Buffer in libykpiv

  • 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

0.49% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 42% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 6.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:P/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.2 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer
  • 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.