What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2018-20483

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2018-12-26 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-200

Description

set_file_metadata in xattr.c in GNU Wget before 1.20.1 stores a file's origin URL in the user.xdg.origin.url metadata attribute of the extended attributes of the downloaded file, which allows local users to obtain sensitive information (e.g., credentials contained in the URL) by reading this attribute, as demonstrated by getfattr. This also applies to Referer information in the user.xdg.referrer.url metadata attribute. According to 2016-07-22 in the Wget ChangeLog, user.xdg.origin.url was partially based on the behavior of fwrite_xattr in tool_xattr.c in curl.

Affected products

• gnuwget wget: before 1.20.1 — fixed in 1.20.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: gnuwget wget 1.20.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/wget.git/tree/NEWS
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/106358
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2019:3701
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201903-08
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20190321-0002/
• https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1077676739877232640
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/3943-1/
• http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/wget.git/tree/NEWS
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/106358
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2019:3701
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201903-08
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20190321-0002/

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