International Components For UnicodeApplication · Icu Project

CVE-2016-6293

CRITICAL · 9.8 CVSS v3.0 Published 2016-07-25
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to after 57.1 or later.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Public exploit Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

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 · unedited
The uloc_acceptLanguageFromHTTP function in common/uloc.cpp in International Components for Unicode (ICU) through 57.1 for C/C++ does not ensure that there is a '\0' character at the end of a certain temporary array, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (out-of-bounds read) or possibly have unspecified other impact via a call with a long httpAcceptLanguage argument.

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
How this class of weakness works · CWE-119

The program reads or writes outside the bounds of an allocated buffer, corrupting adjacent memory. With crafted input an attacker can overwrite control data and, with effort, redirect execution to their own code. Remediation ranges from bounds checking and safe library functions to compiler mitigations, usually alongside a careful audit of the surrounding code.

General guidance for the memory buffer bounds error class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

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
International Components For UnicodeApplication
Affected:<= 57.1

CVSS 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
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

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

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.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to a release after 57.1
Recommended fix Moderate confidence

ICU 58 or later (latest stable release recommended)

  1. 1. Identify the current version of ICU (International Components for Unicode) installed in your system
  2. 2. Upgrade ICU to version 58 or later (recommended: latest stable release)
  3. 3. Rebuild any applications that link against the ICU library to ensure they use the updated version
  4. 4. Verify the upgrade was successful by checking the ICU version number
  5. 5. Test that applications relying on ICU functionality (particularly locale/language handling) operate correctly
Caveat Major version upgrades in ICU (e.g., 57.x to 58.x) may introduce backward compatibility changes in locale data, collation behavior, or Unicode character properties; review the release notes for your target version

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can identify the exact fixed release, upgrade, and verify it in staging — typical engagement from $3,550. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2016-6293 — 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 sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2016-6293 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

Be the first to add a field note for this CVE — a mitigation you’ve verified, a version caveat, or a link to a working fix. Sign in above to contribute.

What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data