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Fencer Intel
medium 6.5

CVE-2018-8036 json

Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition in Apache PDFBox

published 2018-07-03 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-j2xq-pfff-mvgg , EUVD-2022-4264

cvss
6.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.9%
EPSS 3.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 90%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In Apache PDFBox 1.8.0 to 1.8.14 and 2.0.0RC1 to 2.0.10, a carefully crafted (or fuzzed) file can trigger an infinite loop which leads to an out of memory exception in Apache PDFBox's AFMParser.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.pdfbox:pdfbox 1.8.15, 2.0.11
  • libpdfbox-java Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1:1.8.15-1
  • libpdfbox2-java Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.0.11-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-8036

  • libpdfbox-java Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 1:1.8.16-2~18.04
  • libpdfbox2-java Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 2.0.13-2~18.04

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-8036

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

  • apache-pdfbox SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP3 1.8.12-3.5.4
  • apache-pdfbox SLE Module for Development Tools 15 1.8.12-5.3.13

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2018:3318-1SUSE-SU-2018:2630-1

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-2018-8036 updated cvss 6.5

pdfbox: Infinite loop in AFMParser.java allows for out of memory erros via crafted PDF

  • Red Hat JBoss Data Virtualization 6 pdfbox pdfbox Red Hat Satellite 5 nutch
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Fuse 7
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:2669
  • Red Hat BPM Suite 6 pdfbox pdfbox Red Hat JBoss BRMS 6 pdfbox pdfbox Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6 pdfbox pdfbox Red Hat JBoss Fuse Service Works 6 pdfbox pdfbox
    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

3.93% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 90% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 6.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
GitHub 3.0 6.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.apache.pdfbox:pdfbox
>=1.8.0, <1.8.15
>=2.0.0RC1, <2.0.11
1.8.15
2.0.11

Affected products

  • Apache Software Foundation Apache PDFBox

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.