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Debian LinuxOperating system · Debian

CVE-2017-2885

CRITICAL · 9.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2018-04-24
No fix yet
No fix has been published. The vendor has not shipped a fixed release or patch. You remain exposed.
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
An exploitable stack based buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the GNOME libsoup 2.58. A specially crafted HTTP request can cause a stack overflow resulting in remote code execution. An attacker can send a special HTTP request to the vulnerable server to trigger this vulnerability.

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-787

The program writes past the bounds of a buffer, overwriting adjacent memory an attacker can turn to their advantage. Crafted input can overwrite control data and redirect execution. Remediation is validating every index and length before a write, plus modern memory-safety mitigations.

General guidance for the out-of-bounds write 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
Debian LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 8.0= 9.0
Enterprise Linux DesktopOperating system
Affected:= 7.0
Enterprise Linux ServerOperating system
Affected:= 7.0
Enterprise Linux Server AusOperating system
Affected:= 7.4
Enterprise Linux Server EusOperating system
Affected:= 7.4= 7.5
Enterprise Linux Server TusOperating system
Affected:= 7.4
Enterprise Linux WorkstationOperating system
Affected:= 7.0
LibsoupApplication
Affected:= 2.58

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:3.1/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
Recommended fix High confidence

libsoup 2.60.0 or later (or distribution-specific security update such as RHSA-2017:2913 for RHEL or DSA-4031-1 for Debian)

  1. Check the currently installed libsoup version using: rpm -qa | grep libsoup (RHEL) or dpkg -l | grep libsoup (Debian)
  2. For RHEL/CentOS systems: Run 'yum update libsoup' or 'dnf update libsoup' to apply the latest security patches
  3. For Debian systems: Run 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade libsoup' to install the fixed package
  4. Verify the updated version after installation: rpm -qa | grep libsoup (RHEL) or dpkg -l | libsoup (Debian)
  5. Restart any services that depend on libsoup (such as web servers or GNOME services) to ensure the patched library is loaded
Caveat Minimal risk; this is a security patch upgrade. However, test in staging if possible as minor API changes may exist between 2.58 and 2.60.

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

No vendor fix exists Debian Linux has not published a patch for this.

There is no version to upgrade to and no patch to apply. Every affected install stays exposed until the vendor ships a fix — or somebody else builds one.

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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-2017-2885 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

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What belongs here
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  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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