CVE-2008-1721

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 22.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2008-04-10 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-681

Description

Integer signedness error in the zlib extension module in Python 2.5.2 and earlier allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a negative signed integer, which triggers insufficient memory allocation and a buffer overflow.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 6.06, 7.04, 7.10, 8.04
Debian Linux: 4.0
Python: from 2.4.0 before 2.4.6; from 2.5.0 through 2.5.2 — fixed in 2.4.6

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Python 2.4.6. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://bugs.python.org/issue2586
http://lists.apple.com/archives/security-announce/2009/Feb/msg00000.html
http://secunia.com/advisories/29889
http://secunia.com/advisories/29955
http://secunia.com/advisories/30872
http://secunia.com/advisories/31255
http://secunia.com/advisories/31358
http://secunia.com/advisories/31365
http://secunia.com/advisories/33937
http://secunia.com/advisories/37471
http://secunia.com/advisories/38675
http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200807-01.xml

Get alerted when CVE-2008-1721 or the next vulnerability affects your stack