What is CVE-2018-20450?

CVE-2018-20450 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Libxls Project, classified under Double Free. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2018-12-25.

How severe is CVE-2018-20450?

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

Double Free in Libxls Project

CVE-2018-20450

The read_MSAT function in ole.c in libxls 1.4.0 has a double free that allows attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) via a crafted file, a different vulnerability than CVE-2017-2897.

Vulnerability class: Double Free

Published 2018-12-25 · 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: 0.011 (63.3th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 63rd percentile — 63.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.011 · newest: 0.011 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Libxls Project — versions 1.4.0

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-415 — Double Free

References

github.com/evanmiller/libxls/issues/34 (Exploit, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
security.gentoo.org/glsa/202003-64 (vendor-advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2018-20450?: CVE-2018-20450 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Libxls Project, classified under Double Free. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2018-12-25.
How severe is CVE-2018-20450?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.