What is CVE-2018-17437?

CVE-2018-17437 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Hdfgroup Hdf5, classified under Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2018-09-24.

How severe is CVE-2018-17437?

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

Vulnerability in Hdfgroup Hdf5

CVE-2018-17437

Memory leak in the H5O_dtype_decode_helper() function in H5Odtype.c in the HDF HDF5 through 1.10.3 library allows attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via a crafted HDF5 file.

Published 2018-09-24 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.013 (70.0th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 70th percentile — 70.0% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.013 · newest: 0.013 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Hdfgroup Hdf5

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-772 — Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime

References

github.com/SegfaultMasters/covering360/tree/master/HDF5/vuln5 (Exploit, Third Party Advisory)
lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/08/msg00009.html (mailing-list)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2018-17437?: CVE-2018-17437 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Hdfgroup Hdf5, classified under Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2018-09-24.
How severe is CVE-2018-17437?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.