Predictive Vulnerability Intelligence.

Product

  • Product
  • Pricing
  • Documentation

Company

  • About
  • Partnerships
  • Blog
  • Support

Legal

  • Terms
  • Privacy
  • Data Licensing

© 2026 FAUCET Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.

CVE-2016-2378

27
FAUCET Score

CVE-2016-2378 describes a high-severity buffer overflow vulnerability in Pidgin's handling of the MXIT protocol, affecting various Pidgin and Linux distributions. A malicious server or user can exploit this by sending specially crafted negative length values, leading to memory corruption and potentially allowing for full compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. While the CVSS score is 8.1 (High), indicating a network-based attack with high impact, the attack complexity is also high, and no public exploit code or active exploitation has been observed. Community discussion and media coverage for this CVE are minimal.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
<= 2.10.12CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:pidgin:pidgin:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
12.04CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:12.04:*:*:*:lts:*:*:*
14.04CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:14.04:*:*:*:lts:*:*:*
15.10CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:15.10:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
8.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:8.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.0

8.1HIGH

CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
HIGH
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
HIGH
Integrity Impact
HIGH
Availability Impact
HIGH
Exploitability Score
2.2
Impact Score
5.9
CvssVersion
3.0

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
2.52%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
83.2%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-27
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0252 is in the 40th percentile among its peer group of 8,915 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.1 Reddit, 0.1 Bluesky, 0.0 Mastodon, and 0.2 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

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

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2016-2378Moderate

pidgin: MXIT get_utf8_string Code Execution Vulnerability

Jun 21, 2016

References

security.gentoo.org / glsa/201701-38
debian.org / security/2016/dsa-3620
Third Party Advisory
pidgin.im / news/security
PatchVendor Advisory
securityfocus.com / bid/91335
Third Party AdvisoryVDB Entry
talosintelligence.com / reports/TALOS-2016-0120
Technical DescriptionThird Party Advisory
ubuntu.com / usn/USN-3031-1
Third Party Advisory