CVE-2018-18521 Denial of service in n/a

What is CVE-2018-18521?

CVE-2018-18521 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Canonical Ubuntu Linux, published on 19 Oct 2018. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

Divide-by-zero vulnerabilities in the function arlib_add_symbols() in arlib.c in elfutils 0.174 allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) with a crafted ELF file, as demonstrated by eu-ranlib, because a zero sh_entsize is mishandled.

Weakness: CWE-369

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-18521?

It affects 7 products.

Products include Canonical Ubuntu Linux, Debian Debian Linux, Elfutils Project Elfutils, Opensuse Leap, Redhat Enterprise Linux Desktop, Redhat Enterprise Linux Server and 1 more.

How do I fix CVE-2018-18521?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2018-18521 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-18521 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Canonical Ubuntu Linux

• CVE-2020-11651 SaltStack Salt Authentication Bypass Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2020-7247 OpenSMTPD Remote Code Execution Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2019-16928 Exim Out-of-bounds Write Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2018-6789 Exim Buffer Overflow Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2015-2590 Oracle Java SE and Java SE Embedded Remote Code Execution Exploited Critical 9.8

All Canonical Ubuntu Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

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

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2018-18521, GHSA-ghq7-pw5q-f2jw, UBUNTU-CVE-2018-18521.