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-2017-12988

29
FAUCET Score

CVE-2017-12988 describes a critical buffer over-read vulnerability in the telnet parser of tcpdump versions prior to 4.9.2. This flaw, rated 9.8 CVSS, allows unauthenticated attackers to remotely execute arbitrary code with high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability, requiring no user interaction. While no public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB) is readily available and it's not listed in CISA's KEV catalog, the vulnerability has garnered some community discussion and media coverage, indicating awareness within the cybersecurity community.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
<= 4.9.1CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:tcpdump:tcpdump:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.0

9.8CRITICAL

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

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
HIGH
Integrity Impact
HIGH
Availability Impact
HIGH
Exploitability Score
3.9
Impact Score
5.9
CvssVersion
3.0

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
2.39%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
82.2%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-27
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0239 is in the 72nd percentile among its peer group of 36,897 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.1 Reddit, 0.3 Bluesky, 0.3 Mastodon, and 2.4 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.3 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (4)

github_advisorypatch availablevia nvd_reference
View patch
redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7Fixed in: tcpdump-14:4.9.2-3.el7
View patch
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5Fixed in: tcpdump
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6Fixed in: tcpdump

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2017-12988Low

tcpdump: Buffer over-read in print-telnet.c:telnet_parse() in telnet parser

Sep 13, 2017

References

access.redhat.com / errata/RHEA-2018:0705
github.com / the-tcpdump-group/tcpdump/commit/8934a7d6307267d301182f19ed162563717e29e3
Issue TrackingPatchThird Party Advisory
security.gentoo.org / glsa/201709-23
support.apple.com / HT208221
debian.org / security/2017/dsa-3971
securitytracker.com / id/1039307
tcpdump.org / tcpdump-changes.txt
Vendor Advisory