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Fencer Intel
high 8.8

CVE-2018-16438 json

An issue was discovered in the HDF HDF5 1.8.20 library.

published 8y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2018-8278

cvss
8.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.8%
EPSS 1.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 78%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in the HDF HDF5 1.8.20 library. There is an out of bounds read in H5L_extern_query at H5Lexternal.c.

Patch / fix

  • hdf5 Debian 14, Debian 13 1.14.5+repack-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-16438

  • hdf5_1_10_8-gnu-hpc SLE Module for Package Hub 15 SP3, SLE Module for HPC 15 SP3, openSUSE Leap 15.4 +1 more 1.10.8-150300.4.6.1
  • hdf5_1_10_8-gnu-mpich-hpc SLE Module for Package Hub 15 SP3, SLE Module for HPC 15 SP3, openSUSE Leap 15.4 +1 more 1.10.8-150300.4.6.1
  • hdf5_1_10_8-gnu-mvapich2-hpc SLE Module for Package Hub 15 SP3, SLE Module for HPC 15 SP3, openSUSE Leap 15.4 +1 more 1.10.8-150300.4.6.1
  • hdf5_1_10_8-gnu-openmpi3-hpc SLE Module for Package Hub 15 SP3, SLE Module for HPC 15 SP3, openSUSE Leap 15.4 +1 more 1.10.8-150300.4.6.1
  • hdf5_1_10_8-gnu-openmpi4-hpc SLE Module for Package Hub 15 SP3, SLE Module for HPC 15 SP3, openSUSE Leap 15.4 +1 more 1.10.8-150300.4.6.1
  • hdf5_1_10_8-gnu-hpc SLE High Performance Computing 15-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15-ESPOS 1.10.8-150000.8.7.1
  • hdf5_1_10_8-gnu-mpich-hpc SLE High Performance Computing 15-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15-ESPOS 1.10.8-150000.8.7.1
  • hdf5_1_10_8-gnu-mvapich2-hpc SLE High Performance Computing 15-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15-ESPOS 1.10.8-150000.8.7.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2022:3829-1SUSE-SU-2022:3828-1SUSE-SU-2022:3827-1SUSE-SU-2022:3826-1SUSE-SU-2022:3825-1SUSE-SU-2022:3824-1

Is CVE-2018-16438 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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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-2018-16438 updated cvss 5.3

hdf5: out of bounds read in H5L_extern_query at H5Lexternal.c

  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8 (Liberty) hdf5 Red Hat OpenStack Platform 9 (Mitaka) hdf5 Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 (Newton) hdf5
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 12 (Pike) hdf5
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 (Queens) hdf5 Red Hat OpenStack Platform 14 (Rocky) hdf5
    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

1.77% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 78% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/TeamSeri0us/pocs/tree/master/hdf5/h5stat referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 8.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.8 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

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.