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Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2016-4477 json

wpa_supplicant 0.4.0 through 2.5 does not reject \n and \r characters in passphrase parameters, which allows local users to trigger arbitra…

published 2016-05-09 10 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-5464

cvss
7.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 17%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

wpa_supplicant 0.4.0 through 2.5 does not reject \n and \r characters in passphrase parameters, which allows local users to trigger arbitrary library loading and consequently gain privileges, or cause a denial of service (daemon outage), via a crafted (1) SET, (2) SET_CRED, or (3) SET_NETWORK command.

Patch / fix

  • wpa Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.3-2.4

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-4477

  • wpa Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 2.1-0ubuntu1.5
  • wpa Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 2.4-0ubuntu6.2
  • wpa Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 2.4-0ubuntu10

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2016-4477

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

  • wpa_supplicant openSUSE Tumbleweed 2.6-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10499-1

  • wpa_supplicant Alpine 3.4 2.5-r3

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2016-4477

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • hostapd Arch Linux 2.6-1
  • wpa_supplicant Arch Linux 1:2.6-1

arch linux advisories AVG-10AVG-11

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-2016-4477 updated cvss 7.0

wpa_supplicant: local configuration update allows privilege escalation

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 wpa_supplicant Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 wpa_supplicant Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 wpa_supplicant
    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

Exploit prediction

0.26% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 17% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 7.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.4 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-19 Data Processing Errors

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.