Vulnerability record · CVE-2017-13090 · published 27 October 2017
CVE-2017-13090: Gnu wget heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability
Gnu · Wget
The retr.c:fd_read_body() function is called when processing OK responses. When the response is sent chunked in wget before 1.19.2, the chunk parser uses strtol() to read each chunk's length, but doesn't check that the chunk length is a non-negative number. The code then tries to read the chunk in pieces of 8192 bytes by using the MIN() macro, but ends up passing the negative chunk length to retr.c:fd_read(). As fd_read() takes an int argument, the high 32 bits of the chunk length are discarded, leaving fd_read() with a completely attacker controlled length argument. The attacker can corrupt malloc metadata after the allocated buffer.
Description
The retr.c:fd_read_body() function is called when processing OK responses. When the response is sent chunked in wget before 1.19.2, the chunk parser uses strtol() to read each chunk's length, but doesn't check that the chunk length is a non-negative number. The code then tries to read the chunk in pieces of 8192 bytes by using the MIN() macro, but ends up passing the negative chunk length to retr.c:fd_read(). As fd_read() takes an int argument, the high 32 bits of the chunk length are discarded, leaving fd_read() with a completely attacker controlled length argument. The attacker can corrupt malloc metadata after the allocated buffer.
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Affected products
2 vulnerable configurations from NVD's CPE data, grouped by vendor and product.
References
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Related vulnerabilities
Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2017-13090), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-26). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.
