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Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2016-6318 json

Stack-based buffer overflow in the FascistGecosUser function in lib/fascist.c in cracklib allows local users to cause a denial of service (…

published 2016-09-07 10 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-7245

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.7%
EPSS 0.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 54%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Stack-based buffer overflow in the FascistGecosUser function in lib/fascist.c in cracklib allows local users to cause a denial of service (application crash) or gain privileges via a long GECOS field, involving longbuffer.

Patch / fix

  • cracklib_project cracklib 2.9.6
  • cracklib2 Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.9.2-2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-6318

  • cracklib Studio Onsite 1.3, SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES 11 SP4 +1 more 2.8.12-56.13.1
  • cracklib SLES for SAP 12 SP1, SLES 12 SP1, SLED 12 SP1 +1 more 2.9.0-7.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2016:2211-1SUSE-SU-2016:2107-1

  • cracklib Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +12 more 2.9.7-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2016-6318

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

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-2016-6318 updated cvss 4.0

cracklib: Stack-based buffer overflow when parsing large GECOS field

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 cracklib Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 cracklib, cracklib-dicts, cracklib-python Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 cracklib, cracklib-dicts, cracklib-python
    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

0.74% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 54% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.2 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness

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.