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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.5

CVE-2018-17294 json

The matchCurrentInput function inside lou_translateString.c of Liblouis prior to 3.7 does not check the input string's length, allowing att…

published 2018-09-21 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-9050

cvss
6.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.7%
EPSS 2.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 86%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The matchCurrentInput function inside lou_translateString.c of Liblouis prior to 3.7 does not check the input string's length, allowing attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash via out-of-bounds read) by crafting an input file with certain translation dictionaries.

Patch / fix

  • liblouis liblouis 3.7.0
  • liblouis Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 3.7.0-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-17294

  • liblouis Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 3.5.0-1ubuntu0.3

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-17294

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

  • liblouis SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5, SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 2.6.4-6.9.24
  • python-louis SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5 2.6.4-6.9.39
  • python3-louis SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5 2.6.4-6.9.41
  • liblouis SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4 1.7.0-1.3.16.1
  • python-louis SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4 1.7.0-1.3.16.1
  • liblouis SLE Module for Desktop Applications 15 3.3.0-4.5.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2020:3107-1SUSE-SU-2019:13994-1SUSE-SU-2019:0795-1

  • liblouis openSUSE Leap 15.0 3.3.0-lp150.3.3.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2019:1160-1

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-2018-17294 updated cvss 4.7

liblouis: Stack-based buffer over-read in matchCurrentInput function lou_translateString.c

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 liblouis, python3-louis
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 liblouis, liblouis-utils, liblouis-python
    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

2.72% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 86% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/issues/635 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 6.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/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.