# CVE-2017-1082: Denial of service in FreeBSD

> Attackers can cause application crashes via stack overflow by providing pathological input to the qsort algorithm in FreeBSD.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 12 Sep 2018
- **Updated:** 17 Sep 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-h3fp-qwvr-4r8j

## What is CVE-2017-1082?

CVE-2017-1082 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Freebsd Freebsd, published on 12 Sep 2018. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

In FreeBSD 11.x before 11.1-RELEASE and 10.x before 10.4-RELEASE, the qsort algorithm has a deterministic recursion pattern. Feeding a pathological input to the algorithm can lead to excessive stack usage and potential overflow. Applications that use qsort to handle large data set may crash if the input follows the pathological pattern.

Weakness: CWE-20 (Improper Input Validation)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2017-1082?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Freebsd Freebsd.

## How do I fix CVE-2017-1082?

No fix has been published for CVE-2017-1082 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2017-1082 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-1082 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Freebsd Freebsd

- [CVE-2018-17160](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-17160/): Memory corruption in FreeBSD (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2014-3954](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2014-3954/): Memory corruption in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2006-4304](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2006-4304/): Memory corruption in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2006-0226](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2006-0226/): Integer overflow in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2004-0002](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2004-0002/): Denial of service in n/a (critical 10.0)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2017-1082 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2017-1082 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Freebsd Freebsd, published on 12 Sep 2018. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-1082 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Freebsd Freebsd. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-1082/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-1082/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2017-1082
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-1082
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2017-1082

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-1082/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.