CVE-2023-38253: W3m: out of bounds read in growbuf_to_str() at w3m/indep.c

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2023-07-14 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-125

Description

An out-of-bounds read flaw was found in w3m, in the growbuf_to_Str function in indep.c. This issue may allow an attacker to cause a denial of service through a crafted HTML file.

Affected products

Fedoraproject Extra Packages For Enterprise Linux: 8.0
Fedoraproject Fedora: 38
Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 6.0
Tats W3M: 0.5.3+git20230121

References

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-38253
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2222779
https://github.com/tats/w3m/issues/271
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/AULOBQJLXE2KCT5UVQMKGEFL4GFIAOED/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/MKFZQUK7FPWWJQYICDZZ4YWIPUPQ2D3R/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TODROGVCWZ435HQIZE6ARQC5LPQLIA5C/
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-38253
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2222779
https://github.com/tats/w3m/issues/271
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/AULOBQJLXE2KCT5UVQMKGEFL4GFIAOED/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/MKFZQUK7FPWWJQYICDZZ4YWIPUPQ2D3R/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TODROGVCWZ435HQIZE6ARQC5LPQLIA5C/

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