In libvips before 8.6.3, a NULL function pointer dereference vulnerability was found in the vips_region_generate function in region.c, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service or possibly have unspecified other impact via a crafted image file. This occurs because of a race condition involving a failed delayed load and other worker threads.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2018-7998 is rated High Exploit Risk (64/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.32%). 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 | 2025-11-21 | 0.43% | 0.32% | -0.11% |
| 2 | 2025-11-18 | 0.34% | 0.43% | +0.09% |
| 3 | 2025-03-30 | — | 0.34% | — |
Full EPSS history (12 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.5 | 3.0 | HIGH |
|
1.6 | 5.9 | [email protected] |
| 5.1 | 2.0 | MEDIUM |
|
4.9 | 6.4 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
low | CVE-2018-7998 low priority: Debian including 1 source packages (vips), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2018-7998 |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2018-7998 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (vips), 16 status rows across 16 suites (artful, bionic, cosmic, disco, eoan, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 10, released 3, ignored 2, DNE 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2018-7998 |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| libvips | libvips | < 8.6.3 | cpe:2.3:a:libvips:libvips:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | debian_linux | 7.0 | cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:7.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://github.com/jcupitt/libvips/commit/20d840e6da15c1574b3ed998bc92f91d1e36c2a5 | Patch |
| https://github.com/jcupitt/libvips/issues/893 | Exploit Third Party Advisory |
| https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/03/msg00009.html | Third Party Advisory |