CVE-2018-15686
systemd: reexec state injection: fgets() on overlong lines leads to line splitting
- 7.0HighCVSS base score
- 2.3%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 17% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- 1Public exploitsMetasploit, Nuclei and Exploit-DB
Description
A vulnerability in unit_deserialize of systemd allows an attacker to supply arbitrary state across systemd re-execution via NotifyAccess. This can be used to improperly influence systemd execution and possibly lead to root privilege escalation. Affected releases are systemd versions up to and including 239.
Public exploit
An exploit or proof of concept is public: anyone can try it against an unpatched system. The public collections list an Exploit-DB entry for it. A reference of the record is tagged as an exploit.
Show the exploits2
Exploit-DB1 entry
- systemd - 'reexec' State Injection (Exploit-DB entry) (opens in a new tab)
EDB-ID 45714dos, linuxpublished 29 Oct 2018Verified
References tagged exploit1 reference
- 45714 (opens in a new tab)exploitx_refsource_EXPLOIT-DBx_transferred
Modules, templates and exploits as listed by the Metasploit Framework (BSD-3-Clause), ProjectDiscovery's Nuclei templates (MIT) and the Exploit Database (GPLv2), read once a day. Where the data comes from
Timeline
ID reserved
By canonical
- 2 months later
· 2 months later
Published
- 7 years later
· 7 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| canonicalCNA (assigner) | 3.0 | High7.0 | CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | High7.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 2.3% · top 17% of all CVEs (10 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.0.
Affected products
References
11
- GLSA-201810-10 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_GENTOOx_transferred
- [debian-lts-announce] 20181119 [SECURITY] [DLA 1580-1] systemd security update (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_refsource_MLISTx_transferred
- 105747 (opens in a new tab)vdb-entryx_refsource_BIDx_transferred
- 45714 (opens in a new tab)exploitx_refsource_EXPLOIT-DBx_transferred
- USN-3816-1 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_UBUNTUx_transferred
- RHSA-2019:2091 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_REDHATx_transferred
- RHSA-2019:3222 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_REDHATx_transferred
- RHSA-2020:0593 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_REDHATx_transferred
- [bookkeeper-issues] 20200729 [GitHub] [bookkeeper] padma81 opened a new issue #2387: Security vulnerabilities in the apache/bookkeeper-4.9.2 image (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_refsource_MLISTx_transferred
- https://www.oracle.com//security-alerts/cpujul2021.html (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/10519 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2018-7556 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2018-15686)Record last updated .