What is CVE-2018-7440?

CVE-2018-7440 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Leptonica, classified under OS Command Injection. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2018-02-23.

How severe is CVE-2018-7440?

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

RCE in Leptonica

CVE-2018-7440

An issue was discovered in Leptonica through 1.75.3. The gplotMakeOutput function allows command injection via a $(command) approach in the gplot rootname argument. This issue exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2018-3836.

Vulnerability class: Command Injection (OS Command Injection)

Published 2018-02-23 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.8 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.037 (89.5th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 89th percentile — 89.5% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.037 · newest: 0.037 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Leptonica
Debian Linux — versions 7.0

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-78 — OS Command Injection

References

lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/03/msg00005.html (mailing-list, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
github.com/DanBloomberg/leptonica/issues/303 (Third Party Advisory)
security.gentoo.org/glsa/202312-01 (vendor-advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2018-7440?: CVE-2018-7440 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Leptonica, classified under OS Command Injection. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2018-02-23.
How severe is CVE-2018-7440?: Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.