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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2018-16789 json

libhttp/url.c in shellinabox through 2.20 has an implementation flaw in the HTTP request parsing logic.

published 7y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2018-8589

cvss
7.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
6.0%
EPSS 6.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 93%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

libhttp/url.c in shellinabox through 2.20 has an implementation flaw in the HTTP request parsing logic. By sending a crafted multipart/form-data HTTP request, an attacker could exploit this to force shellinaboxd into an infinite loop, exhausting available CPU resources and taking the service down.

Patch / fix

  • shellinabox Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.21

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-16789

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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-2018-16789 updated cvss 7.5

shellinabox: Infinite loop due to malformed request payload

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

5.99% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 93% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • packetstormsecurity.com http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/149978/Shell-In-A-Box-2.2.0-Denial-Of-Service.html referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • seclists.org http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2018/Oct/50 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 7.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.8 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-835 Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition

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.