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Fencer Intel
medium 5.5

CVE-2015-8729 json

The ascend_seek function in wiretap/ascendtext.c in the Ascend file parser in Wireshark 1.12.x before 1.12.9 and 2.0.x before 2.0.1 does no…

published 2016-01-04 10 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2015-8606

cvss
5.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
4.1%
EPSS 4.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 90%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB

Summary

The ascend_seek function in wiretap/ascendtext.c in the Ascend file parser in Wireshark 1.12.x before 1.12.9 and 2.0.x before 2.0.1 does not ensure the presence of a '\0' character at the end of a date string, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (out-of-bounds read and application crash) via a crafted file.

Patch / fix

  • wireshark Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.0.1+g59ea380-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2015-8729

  • wireshark Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 2.6.3-1~ubuntu14.04.1
  • wireshark Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 2.6.3-1~ubuntu16.04.1
  • wireshark Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 2.6.3-1~ubuntu18.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2015-8729

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

  • wireshark SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES for SAP 11 SP3, SLES 11 SP4 +6 more 1.12.9-0.12.1
  • wireshark SLES for SAP 12 SP1, SLES for SAP 12, SLES 12 SP1 +5 more 1.12.9-22.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2016:0110-1SUSE-SU-2016:0109-1

  • wireshark openSUSE Tumbleweed 2.2.2-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10199-1

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-2015-8729 updated cvss 4.3

wireshark: Ascend file parser crash (wnpa-sec-2015-47)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 wireshark Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 wireshark, wireshark-gnome Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 wireshark, wireshark-gnome
    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

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (EDB-39001)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

4.10% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 90% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-39001 Wireshark - ascend_seek Static Out-of-Bounds Read dos, 2015-12-16

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 5.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/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
  • 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.