What is CVE-2020-27819?

CVE-2020-27819 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Libxls Project, classified under NULL Pointer Dereference. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2021-02-23.

How severe is CVE-2020-27819?

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

NULL pointer dereference in Libxls Project

CVE-2020-27819

An issue was discovered in libxls before and including 1.6.1 when reading Microsoft Excel files. A NULL pointer dereference vulnerability exists when parsing XLS cells in libxls/xls2csv.c:199. It could allow a remote attacker to cause a denial of service via crafted XLS file.

Published 2021-02-23 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.008 (55.8th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 56th percentile — 55.8% 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

Libxls Project
Libxls — versions libxls before 1.6.2

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-476 — NULL Pointer Dereference

References

bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi (Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2020-27819?: CVE-2020-27819 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Libxls Project, classified under NULL Pointer Dereference. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2021-02-23.
How severe is CVE-2020-27819?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.