What is CVE-2016-7984?

CVE-2016-7984 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Tcpdump, classified under Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2017-01-28.

How severe is CVE-2016-7984?

Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.

Buffer overflow in Tcpdump

CVE-2016-7984

The TFTP parser in tcpdump before 4.9.0 has a buffer overflow in print-tftp.c:tftp_print().

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

Published 2017-01-28 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.8 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.033 (88.1th percentile), scored 2026-10-02.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 88th percentile — 88.1% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.033 · newest: 0.033 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Tcpdump

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-119 — Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

References

www.securitytracker.com/id/1037755 (vdb-entry)
www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-3775 (vendor-advisory)
access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:1871 (vendor-advisory)
www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org/msg1494526.html
www.securityfocus.com/bid/95852 (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)
security.gentoo.org/glsa/201702-30 (vendor-advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2016-7984?: CVE-2016-7984 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Tcpdump, classified under Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2017-01-28.
How severe is CVE-2016-7984?: Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.