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    CVE-2017-13720

    In the PatternMatch function in fontfile/fontdir.c in libXfont through 1.5.2 and 2.x before 2.0.2, an attacker with access to an X connection can cause a buffer over-read during pattern matching of fonts, leading to information disclosure or a crash (denial of service). This occurs because '\0' characters are incorrectly skipped in situations involving ? characters.

    Published:Oct 4, 2017
    Last Modified:Apr 20, 2025
    EPS:Oct 11, 2017
    EPSS Score:0.00103
    CVSS Score:7.1

    Affected Products

    Vendor
    X.org
    Product
    Libxfont

    Exploits

    No exploit reference

    Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

    CAPEC-10 Buffer Overflow via Environment Variables
    CAPEC-101 Server Side Include (SSI) Injection
    CAPEC-104 Cross Zone Scripting
    CAPEC-108 Command Line Execution through SQL Injection
    CAPEC-109 Object Relational Mapping Injection
    CAPEC-110 SQL Injection through SOAP Parameter Tampering
    CAPEC-120 Double Encoding
    CAPEC-13 Subverting Environment Variable Values
    CAPEC-135 Format String Injection
    CAPEC-136 LDAP Injection
    CAPEC-14 Client-side Injection-induced Buffer Overflow
    CAPEC-153 Input Data Manipulation
    CAPEC-182 Flash Injection
    CAPEC-209 XSS Using MIME Type Mismatch
    CAPEC-22 Exploiting Trust in Client
    CAPEC-23 File Content Injection
    CAPEC-230 Serialized Data with Nested Payloads
    CAPEC-231 Oversized Serialized Data Payloads
    CAPEC-24 Filter Failure through Buffer Overflow
    CAPEC-250 XML Injection
    CAPEC-261 Fuzzing for garnering other adjacent user/sensitive data
    CAPEC-267 Leverage Alternate Encoding
    CAPEC-28 Fuzzing
    CAPEC-3 Using Leading 'Ghost' Character Sequences to Bypass Input Filters
    CAPEC-31 Accessing/Intercepting/Modifying HTTP Cookies
    CAPEC-42 MIME Conversion
    CAPEC-43 Exploiting Multiple Input Interpretation Layers
    CAPEC-45 Buffer Overflow via Symbolic Links
    CAPEC-46 Overflow Variables and Tags
    CAPEC-47 Buffer Overflow via Parameter Expansion
    CAPEC-473 Signature Spoof
    CAPEC-52 Embedding NULL Bytes
    CAPEC-53 Postfix, Null Terminate, and Backslash
    CAPEC-540 Overread Buffers
    CAPEC-588 DOM-Based XSS
    CAPEC-63 Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
    CAPEC-64 Using Slashes and URL Encoding Combined to Bypass Validation Logic
    CAPEC-664 Server Side Request Forgery
    CAPEC-67 String Format Overflow in syslog()
    CAPEC-7 Blind SQL Injection
    CAPEC-71 Using Unicode Encoding to Bypass Validation Logic
    CAPEC-72 URL Encoding
    CAPEC-73 User-Controlled Filename
    CAPEC-78 Using Escaped Slashes in Alternate Encoding
    CAPEC-79 Using Slashes in Alternate Encoding
    CAPEC-8 Buffer Overflow in an API Call
    CAPEC-80 Using UTF-8 Encoding to Bypass Validation Logic
    CAPEC-81 Web Server Logs Tampering
    CAPEC-83 XPath Injection
    CAPEC-85 AJAX Footprinting
    CAPEC-88 OS Command Injection
    CAPEC-9 Buffer Overflow in Local Command-Line Utilities

    Related CVEs

    CVE-2026-56003 (CVSS 8.5) — A heap buffer overflow due to missing size checking in the property buffer when parsing PCF files in libXfont2…
    CVE-2026-56001 (CVSS 8.5) — A heap buffer overflow in BitmapScaleBitmaps in libXfont2 before 2.0.8 due to an overflowing 32bit size could …
    CVE-2026-56002 (CVSS 8.5) — A heap bufferflow in pcfReadFont() due to missing glyph bounds checking in libXfont2 before 2.0.8  allows atta…
    CVE-2017-13722 (CVSS 7.1) — In the pcfGetProperties function in bitmap/pcfread.c in libXfont through 1.5.2 and 2.x before 2.0.2, a missing…
    CVE-2007-1352 (CVSS 3.8) — Integer overflow in the FontFileInitTable function in X.Org libXfont before 20070403 allows remote authenticat…
    CVE-2007-1351 (CVSS 8.5) — Integer overflow in the bdfReadCharacters function in bdfread.c in (1) X.Org libXfont before 20070403 and (2) …

    Common Vulnerability Scoring System

    Attack Vector
    Network
    Adjacent
    Local
    Physical
    Privileges Required
    None
    Low
    High
    User Interaction
    None
    Required
    Scope
    Unchanged
    Changed
    Confidentiality
    None
    Low
    High
    Integrity
    None
    Low
    High
    Availability
    None
    Low
    High