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Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2018-9918 json

libqpdf.a in QPDF through 8.0.2 mishandles certain "expected dictionary key but found non-name object" cases, allowing remote attackers to…

published 2018-04-10 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-21510

cvss
7.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.7%
EPSS 1.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 76%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

libqpdf.a in QPDF through 8.0.2 mishandles certain "expected dictionary key but found non-name object" cases, allowing remote attackers to cause a denial of service (stack exhaustion), related to the QPDFObjectHandle and QPDF_Dictionary classes, because nesting in direct objects is not restricted.

Patch / fix

  • qpdf Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 8.0.2-3

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-9918

  • qpdf Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 8.0.2-3~14.04.1
  • qpdf Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 8.0.2-3~16.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-9918

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

  • qpdf SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5, SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 7.1.1-3.11.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:2173-1

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-2018-9918 updated cvss 3.3

qpdf: stack exhaustion in QPDFObjectHandle and QPDF_Dictionary classes in libqpdf.a

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 qpdf, qpdf-libs
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 qpdf, qpdf-libs
    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

1.67% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 76% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf/issues/202 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 7.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/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.