What is CVE-2018-18690?

CVE-2018-18690 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux Kernel, classified under Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2018-10-26.

How severe is CVE-2018-18690?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.

Vulnerability in Linux Kernel

CVE-2018-18690

In the Linux kernel before 4.17, a local attacker able to set attributes on an xfs filesystem could make this filesystem non-operational until the next mount by triggering an unchecked error condition during an xfs attribute change, because xfs_attr_shortform_addname in fs/xfs/libxfs/xfs_attr.c mishandles ATTR_REPLACE operations with conversion of an attr from short to long form.

Published 2018-10-26 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.007 (50.7th percentile), scored 2026-10-01.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 51st percentile — 50.7% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.007 · newest: 0.007 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Linux Kernel
Canonical Ubuntu Linux — versions 12.04, 14.04, 16.04
Debian Linux — versions 8.0

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-754 — Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions

References

usn.ubuntu.com/3848-2/ (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
usn.ubuntu.com/3847-1/ (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
usn.ubuntu.com/3847-2/ (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
usn.ubuntu.com/3849-1/ (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
usn.ubuntu.com/3849-2/ (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
usn.ubuntu.com/3848-1/ (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
usn.ubuntu.com/3847-3/ (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi (Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
www.securityfocus.com/bid/105753 (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)
bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi (Exploit, Issue Tracking, Vendor Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2018-18690?: CVE-2018-18690 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux Kernel, classified under Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2018-10-26.
How severe is CVE-2018-18690?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.