CVE-2018-15869

An Amazon Web Services (AWS) developer who does not specify the --owners flag when describing images via AWS CLI, and therefore not properly validating source software per AWS recommended security best practices, may unintentionally load an undesired and potentially malicious Amazon Machine Image (AMI) from the uncurated public community AMI catalog.

Published: 2018-08-24 Last update: 2026-06-16 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2018-15869 is rated Moderate Risk (48.8/100): CVSS Medium severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 1.80%). EPSS rose +1.16% over the last day, indicating growing attacker interest. Review affected assets and schedule remediation.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2018-15869

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 0.64% 1.80% +1.16%
2 2025-03-30 2.02% 0.64% -1.39%
3 2025-03-29 — 2.02% —

Full EPSS history (7 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2018-15869

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.3 3.0 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N 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:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
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:L)
Attackers could change some data, but it’s limited—not everything goes.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 3.9 1.4 [email protected]
5.0 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N Click to expand
Access vector (AV:N)
Can be exploited remotely over network reachability.
Access complexity (AC:L)
Exploitation conditions are straightforward and predictable.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:N)
No confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:P)
Partial integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:N)
No availability impact.
 10.0 2.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2018-15869

OS Trackers for CVE-2018-15869

vendor priority summary link
debian low CVE-2018-15869 low priority: Debian including 1 source packages (packer), 2 status rows across 2 suites (bookworm, bullseye): resolved 2. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2018-15869
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2018-15869
suse high CVE-2018-15869 severity important: SUSE including 302 source package names (amazon/suse-sles-15-sp1-chost-byos-v20210304-hvm-ssd-x86_64, amazon/suse-sles-15-sp1-chost-byos-v20220127-hvm-ssd-x86_64, …), 315 product×package rows across 28 product lines (HPE Helion OpenStack 8, Image SLES12-SP5-EC2-BYOS, … (28 product lines)): Known Affected 231, Fixed 82, Known Not Affected 2. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2018-15869/
ubuntu medium CVE-2018-15869 medium priority: Ubuntu including 2 source packages (awscli, packer), 38 status rows across 19 suites (bionic, cosmic, disco, eoan, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 15, ignored 10, DNE 8, needed 3, needs-triage 1, released 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2018-15869

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2018-15869

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
hashicorp packer < 1.3.0 cpe:2.3:a:hashicorp:packer:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2018-15869

URL Tags
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/105172 Third Party Advisory VDB Entry
https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/issues/6584 Third Party Advisory
cvelogic Threat Intelligence