An issue has been found in HTSlib 1.8. It is a memory leak in bgzf_getline in bgzf.c. NOTE: the software maintainer's position is that the "failure to free memory" can be fixed in applications that use the HTSlib library (such as test/test_bgzf.c in the original report) and is not a library issue
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2018-13843 is rated High Exploit Risk (64.5/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.37%). Core evidence: 1 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | 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 | 2025-03-19 | 0.33% | 0.37% | +0.03% |
| 2 | 2025-03-17 | 0.11% | 0.33% | +0.22% |
| 3 | 2023-03-07 | — | 0.11% | — |
Full EPSS history (5 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
|
low | CVE-2018-13843 low priority: Debian including 1 source packages (htslib), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2018-13843 |
ubuntu
|
negligible | CVE-2018-13843 negligible priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (htslib), 17 status rows across 17 suites (artful, bionic, cosmic, disco, eoan, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 14, ignored 2, needs-triage 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2018-13843 |
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://github.com/samtools/htslib/issues/731#issue-339662537 | Exploit Patch Third Party Advisory |