CVE-2018-7173

A large loop in JBIG2Stream::readSymbolDictSeg in xpdf 4.00 allows an attacker to cause denial of service via a specific file due to inappropriate decoding.

Published: 2018-02-15 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2018-7173 is rated Moderate Risk (40.7/100): CVSS Medium severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.80%). 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.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2018-7173

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 0.15% 0.80% +0.65%
2 2025-03-30 0.31% 0.15% -0.16%
3 2025-03-29 0.31%

Full EPSS history (10 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2018-7173

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.5 3.0 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
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.
1.8 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-2018-7173

OS Trackers for CVE-2018-7173

vendor priority summary link
debian unimportant CVE-2018-7173 unimportant priority: Debian including 1 source packages (xpdf), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): open 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2018-7173
suse medium CVE-2018-7173 severity moderate: SUSE including 16 source package names (libpoppler-cpp0, libpoppler-devel, …), 216 product×package rows across 37 product lines (SUSE CaaS Platform 4.0, SUSE Enterprise Storage 7, … (37 product lines)): Known Not Affected 216. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2018-7173/
ubuntu negligible CVE-2018-7173 negligible priority: Ubuntu including 4 source packages (ipe, libextractor, poppler, xpdf), 80 status rows across 20 suites (artful, bionic, cosmic, disco, eoan, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): ignored 30, not-affected 30, needs-triage 9, DNE 5, needed 5, deferred 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2018-7173

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2018-7173

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
xpdfreader xpdf 4.00 cpe:2.3:a:xpdfreader:xpdf:4.00:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2018-7173

URL Tags
https://forum.xpdfreader.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=607 Issue Tracking Vendor Advisory
cvelogic Threat Intelligence