What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2018-14779

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.8 v3.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2018-08-15 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-119

Description

A buffer overflow issue was discovered in the Yubico-Piv 1.5.0 smartcard driver. The file lib/ykpiv.c contains the following code in the function `ykpiv_transfer_data()`: {% highlight c %} if(*out_len + recv_len - 2 > max_out) { fprintf(stderr, "Output buffer to small, wanted to write %lu, max was %lu.", *out_len + recv_len - 2, max_out); } if(out_data) { memcpy(out_data, data, recv_len - 2); out_data += recv_len - 2; *out_len += recv_len - 2; } {% endhighlight %} -- it is clearly checked whether the buffer is big enough to hold the data copied using `memcpy()`, but no error handling happens to avoid the `memcpy()` in such cases. This code path can be triggered with malicious data coming from a smartcard.

Affected products

• Yubico Piv Manager: before 1.4.2; 1.4.2, 1.4.2b, 1.4.2c, 1.4.2d, 1.4.2e, 1.4.2f (+1) — fixed in 1.4.2
• Yubico Piv Tool: before 1.6.0 — fixed in 1.6.0
• Yubico Smart Card Minidriver: through 3.7.3.160

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Yubico Piv Manager 1.4.2; Yubico Piv Tool 1.6.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2018/08/14/2
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/4276-1/
• https://www.x41-dsec.de/lab/advisories/x41-2018-001-Yubico-Piv/
• https://www.yubico.com/support/security-advisories/ysa-2018-03/
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2018/08/14/2
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/4276-1/
• https://www.x41-dsec.de/lab/advisories/x41-2018-001-Yubico-Piv/
• https://www.yubico.com/support/security-advisories/ysa-2018-03/

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