BitlBee before 3.5 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code via a file transfer request for a contact that is not in the contact list.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2016-10189 is rated Moderate Risk (57.5/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 1.72%). Mandatory action: Review affected assets and schedule remediation.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
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 | 2026-05-29 | 3.18% | 1.72% | -1.46% |
| 2 | 2025-11-15 | 3.40% | 3.18% | -0.22% |
| 3 | 2025-03-30 | — | 3.40% | — |
Full EPSS history (9 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.5 | 3.0 | HIGH |
|
3.9 | 3.6 | [email protected] |
| 5.0 | 2.0 | MEDIUM |
|
10.0 | 2.9 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
not yet assigned | CVE-2016-10189 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (bitlbee), 4 status rows across 4 suites (bookworm, bullseye, sid, trixie): resolved 4. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-10189 |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2016-10189 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (bitlbee), 23 status rows across 23 suites (artful, bionic, cosmic, disco, eoan, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, precise, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial, yakkety, zesty): not-affected 18, ignored 2, DNE 1, needed 1, released 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2016-10189 |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| bitlbee | bitlbee | <= 3.4.2 | cpe:2.3:a:bitlbee:bitlbee:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| bitlbee | bitlbee-libpurple | <= 3.5 | cpe:2.3:a:bitlbee:bitlbee-libpurple:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| http://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-3853 | |
| http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/01/30/4 | Mailing List Patch Third Party Advisory |
| http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/01/31/11 | Mailing List Patch Third Party Advisory |
| http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/95931 | |
| https://bugs.bitlbee.org/ticket/1282 | Issue Tracking Patch Vendor Advisory |
| https://github.com/bitlbee/bitlbee/commit/701ab8129ba9ea64f569daedca9a8603abad740f | Patch Third Party Advisory |