Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2018-16869

medium Nessus Plugin ID 222209

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Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

- A Bleichenbacher type side-channel based padding oracle attack was found in the way nettle handles endian conversion of RSA decrypted PKCS#1 v1.5 data. An attacker who is able to run a process on the same physical core as the victim process, could use this flaw extract plaintext or in some cases downgrade any TLS connections to a vulnerable server. (CVE-2018-16869)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 222209

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2018_16869.nasl

Version: 1.2

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 3/4/2025

Updated: 8/18/2025

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.9

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Low

Base Score: 3.3

Temporal Score: 2.4

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:N

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2018-16869

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.7

Temporal Score: 5

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:P/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:L/A:N

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:14.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:centos:centos:7, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:nettle, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:nettle, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:nettle

Required KB Items: Host/OS/identifier, Host/cpu, Host/local_checks_enabled, global_settings/vendor_unpatched

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 11/30/2018

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2018-16869

Detections

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