CVE-2015-8778

Publication date 19 April 2016

Last updated 25 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

Integer overflow in the GNU C Library (aka glibc or libc6) before 2.23 allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via the size argument to the __hcreate_r function, which triggers out-of-bounds heap-memory access.

From the Ubuntu Security Team

Szabolcs Nagy discovered that the hcreate functions in the GNU C Library did not properly check its size argument, leading to an integer overflow. An attacker could use to cause a denial of service (application crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code.

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
eglibc	17.04 zesty	Not in release
	16.10 yakkety	Not in release
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not in release
	15.10 wily	Not in release
	15.04 vivid	Not in release
	14.04 LTS trusty	Fixed 2.19-0ubuntu6.8
	12.04 LTS precise	Fixed 2.15-0ubuntu10.14
glibc	17.04 zesty	Not affected
	16.10 yakkety	Not affected
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not affected
	15.10 wily	Fixed 2.21-0ubuntu4.2
	15.04 vivid	Ignored end of life
	14.04 LTS trusty	Not in release
	12.04 LTS precise	Not in release

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
glibc	Upstream: https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git;h=2f5c1750558fe64bac361f52d6827ab1bcfe52bc

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	9.8 · Critical
Attack vector	Network
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	None
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	High
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	High
Vector	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

References

Related Ubuntu Security Notices (USN)

USN-2985-1
GNU C Library vulnerabilities
25 May 2016