Skip to content
Fencer Intel
medium 6.2

CVE-2016-4804 json

The read_boot function in boot.c in dosfstools before 4.0 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a crafted filesystem, w…

published 2016-06-03 10 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-5787

cvss
6.2
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 39%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The read_boot function in boot.c in dosfstools before 4.0 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a crafted filesystem, which triggers a heap-based buffer overflow in the (1) read_fat function or an out-of-bounds heap read in (2) get_fat function.

Patch / fix

  • dosfstools Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.0-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-4804

  • dosfstools Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.0.26-1ubuntu0.1
  • dosfstools Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 3.0.28-2ubuntu0.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2016-4804

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

  • dosfstools SLES for SAP 12 SP1, SLES 12 SP1, SLED 12 SP1 3.0.26-6.5
  • dosfstools SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4 3.0.26-3.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2016:2145-1SUSE-SU-2016:2146-1

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-2016-4804 updated cvss 1.9

dosfstools: Heap-buffer-overflows in read_fat() and get_fat() functions

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

0.45% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 39% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 6.2 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 2.1 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

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.