CVE-2018-8796 Denial of service in rdesktop

What is CVE-2018-8796?

CVE-2018-8796 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 5 Feb 2019. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

rdesktop versions up to and including v1.8.3 contain an Out-Of-Bounds Read in function process_bitmap_updates() that results in a Denial of Service (segfault).

Weakness: CWE-125, CWE-126

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-8796?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Rdesktop Rdesktop.

How do I fix CVE-2018-8796?

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-2018-8796 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-8796 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 ALPINE-CVE-2018-8796, DEBIAN-CVE-2018-8796, GHSA-qvwm-7qp8-w479, UBUNTU-CVE-2018-8796.