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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2015-7978 json

NTP before 4.2.8p6 and 4.3.0 before 4.3.90 allows a remote attackers to cause a denial of service (stack exhaustion) via an ntpdc relist co…

published 2017-01-30 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2015-7875

cvss
7.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
9.9%
EPSS 9.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 95%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

NTP before 4.2.8p6 and 4.3.0 before 4.3.90 allows a remote attackers to cause a denial of service (stack exhaustion) via an ntpdc relist command, which triggers recursive traversal of the restriction list.

Patch / fix

  • ntp Debian 11 1:4.2.8p7+dfsg-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2015-7978

  • ntp Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 1:4.2.6.p5+dfsg-3ubuntu2.14.04.10
  • ntp Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 1:4.2.8p4+dfsg-3ubuntu5.3

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2015-7978

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

  • ntp RHEL 7 4.2.6p5-25.el7
  • sntp RHEL 7 4.2.6p5-25.el7
  • ntpdate RHEL 7 4.2.6p5-25.el7
  • ntp-perl RHEL 7 4.2.6p5-25.el7
  • ntp RHEL 6 4.2.6p5-10.el6
  • ntpdate RHEL 6 4.2.6p5-10.el6
  • ntp-perl RHEL 6 4.2.6p5-10.el6

red hat advisories RHSA-2016:2583RHSA-2016:0780

  • ntp SLES 11 SP3-TERADATA, SLES 11 SP3-LTSS, SLES 11 SP2-LTSS +3 more 4.2.8p6-41.1
  • ntp SLES for SAP 12, SLES 12, SLED 12 4.2.8p6-46.5.2
  • yast2-ntp-client SLES for SAP 12, SLES 12, SLED 12 +1 more 3.1.12.4-8.2
  • ntp SLES 12 SP1, SLES 11 SP4, SLED 12 SP1 +2 more 4.2.8p6-8.2
  • yast2-ntp-client SLES for SAP 12 SP1, SLES 12 SP1, SLED 12 SP1 +1 more 3.1.22-6.2
  • yast2-ntp-client SLES 11 SP2-LTSS 2.17.14.1-1.12.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2016:1311-1SUSE-SU-2016:1247-1SUSE-SU-2016:1175-1SUSE-SU-2016:1177-1

  • ntp openSUSE Tumbleweed 4.2.8p9-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10181-1

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-2015-7978 updated cvss 4.3

ntp: stack exhaustion in recursive traversal of restriction list

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 ntp
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Keep the number of restriction list entries in ntp.conf lower than 500.”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client (v. 7) ntp 4.2.6p5-25.el7, ntpdate 4.2.6p5-25.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client Optional (v. 7) sntp 4.2.6p5-25.el7, ntp-perl 4.2.6p5-25.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode (v. 7) ntp 4.2.6p5-25.el7, ntpdate 4.2.6p5-25.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode Optional (v. 7) sntp 4.2.6p5-25.el7, ntp-perl 4.2.6p5-25.el7
    fixed: vendor fix “Keep the number of restriction list entries in ntp.conf lower than 500.” RHSA-2016:2583
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 6) ntp 4.2.6p5-10.el6, ntpdate 4.2.6p5-10.el6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Optional (v. 6) ntp-perl 4.2.6p5-10.el6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node (v. 6) ntp 4.2.6p5-10.el6, ntpdate 4.2.6p5-10.el6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node Optional (v. 6) ntp-perl 4.2.6p5-10.el6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) ntp 4.2.6p5-10.el6, ntpdate 4.2.6p5-10.el6
    fixed: vendor fix “Keep the number of restriction list entries in ntp.conf lower than 500.” RHSA-2016:0780
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 7) ntp 4.2.6p5-25.el7, ntpdate 4.2.6p5-25.el7
    fixed: vendor fix “Keep the number of restriction list entries in ntp.conf lower than 500.” RHSA-2016:2583
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 6) ntp-perl 4.2.6p5-10.el6
    fixed: vendor fix “Keep the number of restriction list entries in ntp.conf lower than 500.” RHSA-2016:0780
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 7) sntp 4.2.6p5-25.el7, ntp-perl 4.2.6p5-25.el7
    fixed: vendor fix “Keep the number of restriction list entries in ntp.conf lower than 500.” RHSA-2016:2583
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) ntp 4.2.6p5-10.el6, ntpdate 4.2.6p5-10.el6
    fixed: vendor fix “Keep the number of restriction list entries in ntp.conf lower than 500.” RHSA-2016:0780
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 7) ntp 4.2.6p5-25.el7, ntpdate 4.2.6p5-25.el7
    fixed: vendor fix “Keep the number of restriction list entries in ntp.conf lower than 500.” RHSA-2016:2583
show 2 more
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 6) ntp-perl 4.2.6p5-10.el6
    fixed: vendor fix “Keep the number of restriction list entries in ntp.conf lower than 500.” RHSA-2016:0780
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 7) sntp 4.2.6p5-25.el7, ntp-perl 4.2.6p5-25.el7
    fixed: vendor fix “Keep the number of restriction list entries in ntp.conf lower than 500.” RHSA-2016:2583

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

9.90% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 95% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 7.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

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.