CVE-2018-5803 Denial of service in Linux Kernel

What is CVE-2018-5803?

CVE-2018-5803 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 12 Jun 2018. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In the Linux Kernel before version 4.15.8, 4.14.25, 4.9.87, 4.4.121, 4.1.51, and 3.2.102, an error in the "_sctp_make_chunk()" function (net/sctp/sm_make_chunk.c) when handling SCTP packets length can be exploited to cause a kernel crash.

Weakness: CWE-20

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-5803?

It affects 6 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Linux kernel, Redhat Enterprise Linux Desktop, Redhat Enterprise Linux Server, Redhat Enterprise Linux Workstation, Redhat Virtualization Host.

How do I fix CVE-2018-5803?

Apply the vendor's patch.

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-2018-5803 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-5803 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Public exploit code: 1 proofs of concept on GitHub.

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-2018-5803, GHSA-rw4x-j5hr-xcjv, UBUNTU-CVE-2018-5803.