What is CVE-2016-1888?

CVE-2016-1888 is a high-severity vulnerability in FreeBSD, classified under Improper Authentication. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2017-02-15.

How severe is CVE-2016-1888?

High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.

Auth bypass in FreeBSD

CVE-2016-1888

The telnetd service in FreeBSD 9.3, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, and 11.0 allows remote attackers to inject arguments to login and bypass authentication via vectors involving a "sequence of memory allocation failures."

Vulnerability class: Broken Authentication

Published 2017-02-15 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.019 (78.6th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 79th percentile — 78.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.019 · newest: 0.019 · change: 0.000

Affected products

FreeBSD — versions 9.3, 10.1, 10.2

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-287 — Improper Authentication

References

www.freebsd.org/security/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-16:36.telnetd.asc (vendor-advisory, Vendor Advisory)
www.securitytracker.com/id/1037399 (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2016-1888?: CVE-2016-1888 is a high-severity vulnerability in FreeBSD, classified under Improper Authentication. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2017-02-15.
How severe is CVE-2016-1888?: High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.