CVE-2013-4788

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.1 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 11.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2013-10-04 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-20

Description

The PTR_MANGLE implementation in the GNU C Library (aka glibc or libc6) 2.4, 2.17, and earlier, and Embedded GLIBC (EGLIBC) does not initialize the random value for the pointer guard, which makes it easier for context-dependent attackers to control execution flow by leveraging a buffer-overflow vulnerability in an application and using the known zero value pointer guard to calculate a pointer address.

Affected products

GNU Eglibc: all versions
GNU C Library (glibc): through 2.17; 2.0, 2.0.1, 2.0.2, 2.0.3, 2.0.4, 2.0.5 (+20)

References

http://hmarco.org/bugs/CVE-2013-4788.html
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2015/Sep/23
http://www.mandriva.com/security/advisories?name=MDVSA-2013:283
http://www.mandriva.com/security/advisories?name=MDVSA-2013:284
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2013/07/15/9
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/61183
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201503-04
http://hmarco.org/bugs/CVE-2013-4788.html
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2015/Sep/23
http://www.mandriva.com/security/advisories?name=MDVSA-2013:283
http://www.mandriva.com/security/advisories?name=MDVSA-2013:284
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2013/07/15/9

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