SARA / Free Tools / CVE / CVE-2018-7166

CVE-2018-7166 — In all versions of Node

In all versions of Node.js 10 prior to 10.9.0, an argument processing flaw can cause `Buffer.alloc()` to return uninitialized memory. This method is intended to be safe and only return initialized, or cleared, memory. The third argument specifying `encoding` can be passed as a nu

CVSS
7.5 HIGH
EPSS
2.79% (top 14.00%)
CWE
—
Published
2018-08-21T12:29:00.320
Last modified
2026-10-08T22:16:48.227
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

01What is this vulnerability?

In all versions of Node.js 10 prior to 10.9.0, an argument processing flaw can cause `Buffer.alloc()` to return uninitialized memory. This method is intended to be safe and only return initialized, or cleared, memory. The third argument specifying `encoding` can be passed as a number, this is misinterpreted by `Buffer's` internal "fill" method as the `start` to a fill operation. This flaw may be…

02Affected products

No structured affected-product list available — see references below for vendor advisories.

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

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

09References

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