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Fencer Intel
medium 5.1

CVE-2013-4788 json

The PTR_MANGLE implementation in the GNU C Library (aka glibc or libc6) 2.4, 2.17, and earlier, and Embedded GLIBC (EGLIBC) does not initia…

published 13y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2013-4634

cvss
5.1
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
11.4%
EPSS 11.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 96%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB

Summary

The PTR_MANGLE implementation in the GNU C Library (aka glibc or libc6) 2.4, 2.17, and earlier, and Embedded GLIBC (EGLIBC) does not initialize the random value for the pointer guard, which makes it easier for context-dependent attackers to control execution flow by leveraging a buffer-overflow vulnerability in an application and using the known zero value pointer guard to calculate a pointer address.

Patch / fix

  • glibc Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.17-94

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2013-4788

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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-2013-4788 updated cvss 3.7

glibc: PTR_MANGLE does not initialize to a random value for the pointer guard when compiling static executables

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 glibc Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 nscd, glibc, glibc-utils, glibc-common
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 nscd, glibc, glibc-utils, glibc-common
    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

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (EDB-28657)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

11.43% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 96% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-28657 glibc and eglibc 2.5/2.7/2.13 - Local Buffer Overflow local, 2013-09-30
  • openwall.com http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2013/07/15/9 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • hmarco.org http://hmarco.org/bugs/CVE-2013-4788.html referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 5.1 AV:N/AC:H/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

References

Sources

Fencer Intel 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.