The wu_fnmatch function in wu_fnmatch.c in wu-ftpd 2.6.1 and 2.6.2 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU exhaustion by recursion) via a glob pattern with a large number of * (wildcard) characters, as demonstrated using the dir command.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2005-0256 is rated High Exploit Risk (62/100): CVSS Medium severity, with high exploitation likelihood (EPSS 5.21%, 91th percentile). Core evidence: 2 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Mandatory action: Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
| EDB-ID | Source | Kind | Published | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 842 | exploit_db | edb | 2005-02-25 | Exploit-DB ↗ |
| — | nvd_ref | exploit_tag | Exploit-DB ↗ |
EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).
| # | Date | Old EPSS score | New EPSS score | Delta (New - Old) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2026-06-15 | 26.55% | 5.21% | -21.35% |
| 2 | 2025-08-05 | 24.37% | 26.55% | +2.19% |
| 3 | 2025-03-30 | — | 24.37% | — |
Full EPSS history (11 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.0 | 2.0 | MEDIUM |
|
10.0 | 2.9 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
redhat
|
— | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2005-0256 |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2005-0256 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (wu-ftpd), 4 status rows across 4 suites (dapper, edgy, feisty, upstream): released 3, needs-triage 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2005-0256 |
Not vulnerable. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 shipped with wu-ftpd, however we were unable to reproduce this issue. Additionally, a code analysis showed that attempts to exploit this issue would be caught in the versions we shipped. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=149720
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| washington_university | wu-ftpd | 2.6.1 | cpe:2.3:a:washington_university:wu-ftpd:2.6.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| washington_university | wu-ftpd | 2.6.2 | cpe:2.3:a:washington_university:wu-ftpd:2.6.2:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |