CVE-2018-0493 Use after free in remctl

What is CVE-2018-0493?

CVE-2018-0493 is a high-severity use after free vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 3 Apr 2018. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.

Official description

remctld in remctl before 3.14, when an attacker is authorized to execute a command that uses the sudo option, has a use-after-free that leads to a daemon crash, memory corruption, or arbitrary command execution.

Weakness: CWE-416

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-0493?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Eyrie Remctl.

How do I fix CVE-2018-0493?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.

Is CVE-2018-0493 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-0493 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

• CVE-2015-3306 ProFTPD Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2018-0493, DSA-4159-1, GHSA-5h2w-vxv5-92f3, UBUNTU-CVE-2018-0493.