CVE-2008-1685
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedgcc 4.2.0 through 4.3.0 in GNU Compiler Collection, when casts are not used, considers the sum of a pointer and an int to be greater than or equal to the pointer, which might lead to removal of length testing code that was intended as a protection mechanism against integer overflow and buffer overflow attacks, and provide no diagnostic message about this removal. NOTE: the vendor has determined that this compiler behavior is correct according to section 6.5.6 of the C99 standard (aka ISO/IEC 9899:1999)
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · moderate confidenceGCC 4.2.0 through 4.3.0 may remove length-testing code that compares a pointer+int sum to the original pointer when explicit casts are not used, treating this comparison as always-true per C99 section 6.5.6. This can eliminate security checks intended to prevent integer overflow and buffer overflow attacks without providing any diagnostic warning about the removal.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data= 4.2.0= 4.2.1= 4.2.2= 4.2.3= 4.2.4= 4.3.0CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- M
- Authentication
- None
- Confidentiality
- Partial
- Integrity
- Partial
- Availability
- Partial
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Check installed GCC versionRun 'gcc --version' to identify the compiler versionAffected if The version is 4.2.0, 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.2.3, 4.2.4, or 4.3.0
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Verify all GCC variantsCheck for other GCC installations (gcc-4.2, gcc4, etc.) with 'ls -la /usr/bin/gcc*' and 'which gcc'Affected if Any GCC binary resolves to an affected version in the 4.2.x or 4.3.0 series
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Identify build systems using vulnerable GCCReview build logs, Makefiles, or CI/CD pipelines to find which projects were compiled with the affected GCC versionAffected if Code was compiled using one of the vulnerable GCC versions without explicit pointer cast safety measures
You are affected if GCC version 4.2.0 through 4.3.0 is installed and was used to compile code containing pointer+int comparisons without explicit casts, as security checks may have been optimized away at compile time.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataUse explicit casts in pointer arithmetic and employ bounds-checking libraries or safe integer arithmetic libraries to ensure protection checks are not optimized away by the compiler.
- Consultation2.0 h
- Implementation4.0 h
- Testing2.0 h
- Review / QA1.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2008-1685 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2008-1685 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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