CVE-2015-1473

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.4 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2015-04-08 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-119

Description

The ADDW macro in stdio-common/vfscanf.c in the GNU C Library (aka glibc or libc6) before 2.21 does not properly consider data-type size during a risk-management decision for use of the alloca function, which might allow context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (segmentation violation) or overwrite memory locations beyond the stack boundary via a long line containing wide characters that are improperly handled in a wscanf call.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 10.04, 12.04, 14.04, 14.10
GNU C Library (glibc): through 2.20

References

http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/02/04/1
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/linuxbulletinoct2015-2719645.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/72499
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2519-1
https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=5bd80bfe9ca0d955bfbbc002781bc7b01b6bcb06
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/02/04/1
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/linuxbulletinoct2015-2719645.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/72499
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2519-1
https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=5bd80bfe9ca0d955bfbbc002781bc7b01b6bcb06

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