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CVE-2014-9488

26
FAUCET Score

CVE-2014-9488 is a critical vulnerability affecting GNU less versions prior to 475, as well as specific OpenSUSE distributions of less. It involves an out-of-bounds read within the is_utf8_well_formed function, triggered by malformed UTF-8 characters, potentially leading to severe impact. With a CVSS score of 10.0, this vulnerability is easily exploitable over the network with no authentication required, allowing for complete compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Despite its high severity, there is no known active exploitation, public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB), or significant community discussion surrounding this CVE.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
13.1CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:opensuse:opensuse:13.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
13.2CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:opensuse:opensuse:13.2:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
<= 471CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:gnu:less:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 2.0

10.0HIGH

AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Confidentiality Impact
COMPLETE
Integrity Impact
COMPLETE
Availability Impact
COMPLETE
Access Vector
NETWORK
Access Complexity
LOW
Authentication
NONE
Exploitability Score
10.0
Impact Score
10.0
CvssVersion
2.0

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
4.02%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
89.5%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-24
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0402 is in the 81st percentile among its peer group of 51,466 CVEs.

Social Chatter

No social media mentions found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.0 Reddit, 0.1 Bluesky, 0.1 Mastodon, and 0.4 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.1 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Vendor Patches (3)

redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5Fixed in: less
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6Fixed in: less
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7Fixed in: less

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2014-9488Low

less: out of bounds read access in is_utf8_well_formed()

Mar 10, 2015

References

advisories.mageia.org / MGASA-2015-0139.html
lists.fedoraproject.org / pipermail/package-announce/2015-June/159449.html
lists.opensuse.org / opensuse-updates/2015-03/msg00077.html
blog.fuzzing-project.org / 3-less-out-of-bounds-read-access-TFPA-0022014.html
mandriva.com / security/advisories