CVE-2018-6551 — The malloc implementation in the GNU C Library (aka glibc or libc6), from versio

The malloc implementation in the GNU C Library (aka glibc or libc6), from version 2.24 to 2.26 on powerpc, and only in version 2.26 on i386, did not properly handle malloc calls with arguments close to SIZE_MAX and could return a pointer to a heap region that is smaller than requ

01What is this vulnerability?

The malloc implementation in the GNU C Library (aka glibc or libc6), from version 2.24 to 2.26 on powerpc, and only in version 2.26 on i386, did not properly handle malloc calls with arguments close to SIZE_MAX and could return a pointer to a heap region that is smaller than requested, eventually leading to heap corruption.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / n/a	n/a

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2018-02-02T14:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2024-08-05T06:10:10.398Z

09References

• sourceware.org — https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=8e448310d74b283c5cd02b9ed…
• sourceware.org — https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=22774
• security.netapp.com — https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20190404-0003/