What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-34095: cpdb-libs vulnerable to buffer overflows via scanf

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 1.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2023-06-14 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-121

Description

cpdb-libs provides frontend and backend libraries for the Common Printing Dialog Backends (CPDB) project. In versions 1.0 through 2.0b4, cpdb-libs is vulnerable to buffer overflows via improper use of `scanf(3)`. cpdb-libs uses the `fscanf()` and `scanf()` functions to parse command lines and configuration files, dropping the read string components into fixed-length buffers, but does not limit the length of the strings to be read by `fscanf()` and `scanf()` causing buffer overflows when a string is longer than 1023 characters. A patch for this issue is available at commit f181bd1f14757c2ae0f17cc76dc20421a40f30b7. As all buffers have a length of 1024 characters, the patch limits the maximum string length to be read to 1023 by replacing all occurrences of `%s` with `%1023s` in all calls of the `fscanf()` and `scanf()` functions.

Affected products

• OpenPrinting cpdb-libs: from 1.0 before 2.0; 2.0-beta1, 2.0-beta2, 2.0-beta3, 2.0-beta4 — fixed in 2.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: OpenPrinting cpdb-libs 2.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/06/14/7
• https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cpdb-libs/blob/85555fba64d34f53a2fce099b0488904cc48ed35/cpdb/cpdb-frontend.c#L372
• https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cpdb-libs/blob/85555fba64d34f53a2fce099b0488904cc48ed35/tools/cpdb-text-frontend.c#L362
• https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cpdb-libs/blob/85555fba64d34f53a2fce099b0488904cc48ed35/tools/cpdb-text-frontend.c#L453
• https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cpdb-libs/commit/f181bd1f14757c2ae0f17cc76dc20421a40f30b7
• https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cpdb-libs/security/advisories/GHSA-25j7-9gfc-f46x
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/06/14/7
• https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cpdb-libs/blob/85555fba64d34f53a2fce099b0488904cc48ed35/cpdb/cpdb-frontend.c#L372
• https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cpdb-libs/blob/85555fba64d34f53a2fce099b0488904cc48ed35/tools/cpdb-text-frontend.c#L362
• https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cpdb-libs/blob/85555fba64d34f53a2fce099b0488904cc48ed35/tools/cpdb-text-frontend.c#L453
• https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cpdb-libs/commit/f181bd1f14757c2ae0f17cc76dc20421a40f30b7
• https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cpdb-libs/security/advisories/GHSA-25j7-9gfc-f46x

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