What is CVE-2018-16271?

CVE-2018-16271 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Samsung Galaxy Gear, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2020-01-22.

How severe is CVE-2018-16271?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.

Privilege escalation in Samsung Galaxy Gear

CVE-2018-16271

The wemail_consumer_service (from the built-in application wemail) in Samsung Galaxy Gear series allows an unprivileged process to manipulate a user's mailbox, due to improper D-Bus security policy configurations. An arbitrary email can also be sent from the mailbox via the paired smartphone. This affects Tizen-based firmwares including Samsung Galaxy Gear series before build RE2.

Vulnerability class: Privilege Escalation

Published 2020-01-22 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.008 (55.1th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 55th percentile — 55.1% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.008 · newest: 0.008 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-269 — Improper Privilege Management

References

media.defcon.org/DEF CON 26/DEF CON 26 presentations/Dongsung Kim and Hyoung Ke… (Exploit, Third Party Advisory)
www.youtube.com/watch (Exploit, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2018-16271?: CVE-2018-16271 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Samsung Galaxy Gear, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2020-01-22.
How severe is CVE-2018-16271?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.