CVE-2017-13731

Exp

There is an illegal address access in the function postprocess_termcap() in parse_entry.c in ncurses 6.0 that will lead to a remote denial of service attack.

Published: 2017-08-29 Last update: 2026-05-13 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2017-13731 is rated High Exploit Risk (73.2/100): CVSS Medium severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 2.91%). 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). EPSS rose +2.43% over the last day, indicating growing attacker interest. 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.

Public exploit references (Exploit-DB) for CVE-2017-13731

EDB-ID Source Kind Published Link
— nvd_ref exploit_tag Exploit-DB ↗

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2017-13731

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 0.48% 2.91% +2.43%
2 2026-03-17 0.31% 0.48% +0.17%
3 2025-10-08 — 0.31% —

Full EPSS history (11 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2017-13731

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
6.5 3.0 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 2.8 3.6 [email protected]
4.3 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P Click to expand
Access vector (AV:N)
Can be exploited remotely over network reachability.
Access complexity (AC:M)
Exploitation needs some favorable conditions, but not exceptional ones.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:N)
No confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:N)
No integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:P)
Partial availability impact.
 8.6 2.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2017-13731

OS Trackers for CVE-2017-13731

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2017-13731 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (ncurses), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2017-13731
gentoo normal CVE-2017-13731: 1 GLSA(s) (201804-13), 1 atom(s) (sys-libs/ncurses); latest impact normal. https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=CVE-2017-13731
redhat low — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2017-13731
suse medium CVE-2017-13731 severity moderate: SUSE including 73 source package names (0.9.1:libncurses5-5.9-58.1, 0.9.1:libncurses6-5.9-58.1, …), 319 product×package rows across 59 product lines (Container caasp/v4/default-http-backend, Container caasp/v4/dnsmasq-nanny, … (59 product lines)): Fixed 319. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2017-13731/
ubuntu negligible CVE-2017-13731 negligible priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (ncurses), 14 status rows across 14 suites (artful, bionic, cosmic, disco, eoan, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, trusty, upstream, xenial, zesty): not-affected 9, released 3, ignored 2. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2017-13731

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2017-13731

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
gnu ncurses 6.0 cpe:2.3:a:gnu:ncurses:6.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2017-13731

cvelogic Threat Intelligence