CVE-2018-16840 is a critical heap use-after-free vulnerability affecting curl versions 7.59.0 through 7.61.1, including canonical and haxx curl implementations. This flaw occurs when closing an easy handle, where the library frees a struct but then attempts to write to a field within that freed memory. With a CVSS score of 9.8 (CRITICAL), it presents a severe risk due to its network-based attack vector, low attack complexity, and potential for complete compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. While there is no evidence of active exploitation, public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB) is currently unavailable; however, the vulnerability has garnered significant community discussion, indicating awareness among security researchers.
| Vendor | Product | Version(s) | CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
>= 7.59.0, < 7.62.0CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:a:haxx:curl:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | ||
14.04CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:14.04:*:*:*:lts:*:*:* | ||
16.04CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:*:*:*:lts:*:*:* | ||
18.04CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.04:*:*:*:lts:*:*:* | ||
18.10CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.10:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
CVSS version used by this source: 3.0
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
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.
No media coverage found for this CVE.
The average CVE in this peer group has 0.3 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.