CVE-2018-9838

highpriority · track · 40EPSS 0.042 · 91 %ileEURUUS
grimoire priorityP2 · Scheduled
Exploitable?
—
no known exploitation
Likely / severe?
4.17% (91st) EPSS
CVSS 7.5 · high
Is it mine?
8 products
Check your exposure
Who says so?
5 sources
cnnvd · enisa_euvd · fstec_bdu · nvd

EPSS · scored 2026-10-27

The caml_ba_deserialize function in byterun/bigarray.c in the standard library in OCaml 4.06.0 has an integer overflow which, in situations where marshalled data is accepted from an untrusted source, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory corruption) or possibly execute arbitrary code via a crafted object.

01

cvss

Technical severity, 0–10. One row per scoring source.

9.8
010

base score 0–10 · higher = more severe · hover a vector to decode⚠ sources disagree · high–critical · 7.5–9.8

v2.07.5highAV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:Pprimary · NVD / NIST USexploitability 10 · impact 6.4
v3.09.8criticalCVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:Hprimary · NVD / NIST USexploitability 3.9 · impact 5.9
v3.09.8criticalCVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:Hsecondary · OSV
v3.09criticalCVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:Usecondary · CVSS-BT (t0sche)
v3.19.8criticalAV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:Hsecondary · FSTEC (BDU) RU
02

weaknesses

The CWE weakness classes this flaw belongs to.

03

affected products (8)

Products and version ranges known to be affected.

04

advisories (1)

Vendor and ecosystem advisories describing this.

  • OSEC-2018-01An integer overflow in the `bigarray` serialization module leads to arbitrary code execution2018-04-06vendor · osvUS

    ## Bug description The bigarray module in all recent ocaml versions is capable of reading in serialized (marshalled) objects from a external source which is often used for network operations and interprocess communication. byterun/bigarray.c Line 458 in ea60609 ```C b->data = malloc(elt_size * num_elts); ``` A integer overflow vulnerability allows under certain circumstances an remote attacker to input a corrupt object and edit arbitrary addresses in the processes memory which leads over common techniques (in this take libc one gadget but any rop gadget or got table vector would work) to arbitrary memory access (!) and in the course also arbitrary code execution Please check the writeup.pdf for more details !! In variations of this the exploit is usable in all ocaml versions we tested no matter if compiled to binary or intepreted (!) ## Steps to reproduce Check out the attached archive and run the makefile (or use the precompile executable) the exploit can be run by executing exploit.py (python2.7 and pwntools are required) The last step of code execution is using a one-gadget attack technique and is specific to the glibc version in use (e.g. tested is debian glibc 2.24-11+deb9u1) but can with minimal amount of work be ported to any libc version on any patch level to our knowledge Of course you can also use the exploit.py to write your own version of exploit ## Additional information This Vulnerability in ocaml was discovered by me (maximilian.tschirschnitz@gmx.de) and the exploit collaboratly developed with (philipp.hagenlocher@tum.de) For illustration purposes it was packaged as security challenge to demonstrate the impact of the issue (see writeup.pdf)

05

also known as (4)

Other names and identifiers for this entity.

06

sources

Which sources assert this record, and when.

published 2018-04-06modified 2026-06-17
08

references (7)

External citations — patches, advisories, analysis.

scry

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