Leptonica before 1.75.3 does not limit the number of characters in a %s format argument to fscanf or sscanf, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (stack-based buffer overflow) or possibly have unspecified other impact via a long string, as demonstrated by the gplotRead and ptaReadStream functions.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2018-7186 is rated High Risk (71/100): CVSS Critical severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 3.12%). Core evidence: EPSS rose +1.49% over the last day, indicating growing attacker interest. Mandatory action: High exploitation likelihood—assess exposure and prioritize 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 | 2026-03-22 | 1.63% | 3.12% | +1.49% |
| 2 | 2026-03-15 | 3.12% | 1.63% | -1.49% |
| 3 | 2025-12-15 | — | 3.12% | — |
Full EPSS history (17 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9.8 | 3.0 | CRITICAL |
|
3.9 | 5.9 | [email protected] |
| 7.5 | 2.0 | HIGH |
|
10.0 | 6.4 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
low | CVE-2018-7186 low priority: Debian including 1 source packages (leptonlib), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2018-7186 |
gentoo
|
high | CVE-2018-7186: 1 GLSA(s) (202312-01), 1 atom(s) (media-libs/leptonica); latest impact high. | https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=CVE-2018-7186 |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2018-7186 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (leptonlib), 13 status rows across 13 suites (artful, bionic, cosmic, disco, eoan, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 9, released 2, ignored 1, needs-triage 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2018-7186 |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| leptonica | leptonica | < 1.75.3 | cpe:2.3:a:leptonica:leptonica:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | debian_linux | 7.0 | cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:7.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://bugs.debian.org/890548 | Third Party Advisory |
| https://github.com/DanBloomberg/leptonica/commit/ee301cb2029db8a6289c5295daa42bba7715e99a | Patch Third Party Advisory |
| https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/03/msg00005.html | Mailing List Third Party Advisory |
| https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts/2018/02/msg00054.html | Mailing List Third Party Advisory |
| https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202312-01 |