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CVE-2018-5206

29
FAUCET Score

CVE-2018-5206 describes a critical NULL pointer dereference vulnerability in Irssi versions prior to 1.0.6, specifically affecting Debian Linux distributions. An attacker can trigger this flaw by setting a channel topic without specifying a sender, potentially leading to a denial of service or arbitrary code execution. With a CVSS score of 9.8, this vulnerability is highly severe, requiring no user interaction and allowing for complete compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Despite its criticality, there is no known active exploitation, public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB), or significant community discussion surrounding this CVE.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
< 1.0.6CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:irssi:irssi:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
9.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:9.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

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
2.16%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
80.3%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-27
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0216 is in the 69th 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

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.

Remediation

Vendor Patches (2)

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

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2018-5206Moderate

irssi: NULL pointer dereference when channel topic is set without specifying sender

Jan 6, 2018

References

irssi.org / security/irssi_sa_2018_01.txt
PatchVendor Advisory
debian.org / security/2018/dsa-4162
Third Party Advisory