CVE-2018-15717
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 · uneditedOpen Dental before version 18.4 stores user passwords as base64 encoded MD5 hashes.
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 · high confidenceOpen Dental before version 18.4 stores user passwords using MD5 hashing with base64 encoding. MD5 is cryptographically weak and considered obsolete for password storage due to its vulnerability to collision attacks and rainbow table lookups. Base64 is merely an encoding scheme, not a security mechanism, providing no additional protection.
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< 18.4CVSS 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
- Low
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
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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Identify the installed Open Dental versionAccess the Open Dental software and navigate to Help > About, or check the program files for version information. Alternatively, query the database for the ProgramVersion setting if you have database access.Affected if The installed version is any release prior to 18.4 (for example, 18.3, 18.2, or earlier).
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Locate the user password storageAccess the Open Dental database and identify the table containing user credentials, typically the userod table or similar user authentication table. Examine the password field structure.Affected if A password field exists and contains base64-encoded strings (look for the characteristic base64 character set: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, +, /, with = padding).
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Verify the hashing algorithm in useDecode a sample password hash from base64 and analyze the resulting hex string. MD5 produces a 128-bit (16-byte) hash, resulting in a 24-character base64 string after encoding. Use a known plaintext to test: hash 'password' with MD5+base64 and compare against stored values if possible.Affected if The decoded hash is exactly 16 bytes (32 hex characters), indicating MD5 is used. This confirms the weak hashing mechanism described in the CVE.
A user is affected if their Open Dental installation is version 18.3 or earlier AND the database contains password fields with 24-character base64 strings that decode to 16-byte MD5 hashes.
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 data18.4
Upgrade to Open Dental version 18.4 or later, which implements modern password hashing algorithms. For existing deployments, plan a secure password migration strategy that transitions to bcrypt, scrypt, or Argon2 while maintaining user access.
- Consultation8.0 h
- Implementation16.0 h
- Testing8.0 h
- Review / QA4.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2018-15717 — 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-2018-15717 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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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.
- 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