Detections
Analytics

Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2018-16868

medium Nessus Plugin ID 222306

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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 gnutls handles verification of RSA decrypted PKCS#1 v1.5 data. An attacker who is able to run process on the same physical core as the victim process, could use this to extract plaintext or in some cases downgrade any TLS connections to a vulnerable server. (CVE-2018-16868)

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

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

See Also

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2018-16868

https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2018-16868

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 222306

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2018_16868.nasl

Version: 1.4

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 3/4/2025

Updated: 7/24/2026

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.9

Percentile: 52.21

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Low

Base Score: 3.3

Temporal Score: 2.8

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2018-16868

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.6

Temporal Score: 5.1

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

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:14.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:centos:centos:7, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:gnutls26, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:gnutls28, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:gnutls-c%2b%2b, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:gnutls-dane, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:gnutls-devel, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:gnutls-guile, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:gnutls-utils, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:gnutls, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gnutls-c%2b%2b, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gnutls-dane, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gnutls-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gnutls-guile, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gnutls-utils, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:gnutls

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

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 11/30/2018

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2018-16868