CVE-2015-8916

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 3.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2016-09-20 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-476

Description

bsdtar in libarchive before 3.2.0 returns a success code without filling the entry when the header is a "split file in multivolume RAR," which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and crash) via a crafted rar file.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 12.04, 14.04, 15.10, 16.04
Debian Linux: 7.0, 8.0
libarchive: through 3.1.901a

References

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-1844.html
http://www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3657
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/06/17/2
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/06/17/5
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/linuxbulletinjul2016-3090544.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/91296
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-3033-1
https://blog.fuzzing-project.org/47-Many-invalid-memory-access-issues-in-libarchive.html
https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/issues/504
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2015-8916
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201701-03
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-1844.html

Get alerted when CVE-2015-8916 or the next vulnerability affects your stack