What is CVE-2017-15088?

CVE-2017-15088 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Mit Kerberos 5, classified under Stack-based Buffer Overflow. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2017-11-23.

How severe is CVE-2017-15088?

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

Is CVE-2017-15088 known to be exploited?

2 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Buffer overflow in Mit Kerberos 5

CVE-2017-15088

plugins/preauth/pkinit/pkinit_crypto_openssl.c in MIT Kerberos 5 (aka krb5) through 1.15.2 mishandles Distinguished Name (DN) fields, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (buffer overflow and application crash) in situations involving untrusted X.509 data, related to the get_matching_data and X509_NAME_oneline_ex functions. NOTE: this has security relevance only in use cases outside of the MIT Kerberos distribution, e.g., the use of get_matching_data in KDC certauth plugin code that is specific to Red Hat.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

Published 2017-11-23 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.8 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.083 (94.9th percentile), scored 2026-10-20.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 95th percentile — 94.9% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.083 · newest: 0.083 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Mit Kerberos 5
Krb5 1.5 — versions krb5 1.5

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi (Patch, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi (Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
github.com/krb5/krb5/commit/fbb687db1088ddd894d975996e5f6a4252b9a2b4 (Patch, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
github.com/krb5/krb5/pull/707 (Patch, Third Party Advisory)
www.securityfocus.com/bid/101594 (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2017-15088?: CVE-2017-15088 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Mit Kerberos 5, classified under Stack-based Buffer Overflow. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2017-11-23.
How severe is CVE-2017-15088?: Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.
Is CVE-2017-15088 known to be exploited?: 2 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.