- 5.9MediumCVSS base score
- 3.1%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 12% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
The Internet Key Exchange v1 main mode is vulnerable to offline dictionary or brute force attacks. Reusing a key pair across different versions and modes of IKE could lead to cross-protocol authentication bypasses. It is well known, that the aggressive mode of IKEv1 PSK is vulnerable to offline dictionary or brute force attacks. For the main mode, however, only an online attack against PSK authentication was thought to be feasible. This vulnerability could allow an attacker to recover a weak Pre-Shared Key or enable the impersonation of a victim host or network.
Timeline
ID reserved
By certcc
- 8 months later
· 8 months later
Published
- 6 years later
· 6 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.0 | Medium5.9 | CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 3.1% · top 12% of all CVEs (11 Nov 2026)
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 5.9.
Affected products
- affected 5.5.1
References
References5
- https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity18/sec18-felsch.pdf (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/857035 (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://web-in-security.blogspot.com/2018/08/practical-dictionary-attack-on-ipsec-ike.html (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://blogs.cisco.com/security/great-cipher-but-where-did-you-get-that-key (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K42378447 (opens in a new tab)x_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-2018-17159 (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-2018-5389)Record last updated .