Denial of Service in GNU wget
Summary
| CVE | CVE-2026-16599 |
|---|---|
| State | PUBLISHED |
| Assigner | CERT-PL |
| Source Priority | CVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback |
| Published | 2026-08-25 15:16:30 UTC |
| Updated | 2026-08-28 15:26:19 UTC |
| Description | GNU wget is vulnerable to denial of service in its FTP OPIE/S-KEY authentication functionality. The server-supplied sequence number from the FTP challenge line is used as an iteration count for an MD5 key-derivation loop without any upper bound validation. A malicious FTP server or a network attacker positioned to intercept FTP traffic can send a crafted OPIE challenge with a sequence number near INT_MAX, causing wget to perform up to approximately 2.1 billion MD5 computations and suspend for some time. The --timeout option does not mitigate this because it applies only to network I/O, not CPU computation. This issue was fixed in commit e9697d98e7249b0f68a6be040a4f3dcc5bc101fa |
Risk And Classification
Primary CVSS: v4.0 5.1 MEDIUM from [email protected]
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
EPSS: 0.003800000 probability, percentile 0.309650000 (date 2026-08-30)
Problem Types: CWE-606 | CWE-606 CWE-606 Unchecked input for loop condition
| Version | Source | Type | Score | Severity | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.0 | [email protected] | Secondary | 5.1 | MEDIUM | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/C... |
| 4.0 | CNA | CVSS | 5.1 | MEDIUM | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N |
CVSS v4.0 Breakdown
Attack Vector
NetworkAttack Complexity
LowAttack Requirements
NonePrivileges Required
NoneUser Interaction
ActiveConfidentiality
NoneIntegrity
NoneAvailability
LowSub Conf.
NoneSub Integrity
NoneSub Availability
NoneCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
Vendor Declared Affected Products
References
| Reference | Source | Link | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| gitlab.com/gnuwget/wget/-/commit/e9697d98e7249b0f68a6be040a4f3dcc5bc101fa | [email protected] | gitlab.com | |
| cert.pl/en/posts/2026/08/CVE-2026-16599 | [email protected] | cert.pl | |
| gitlab.com/gnuwget/wget | [email protected] | gitlab.com | |
| CVE Program record | CVE.ORG | www.cve.org | canonical |
| NVD vulnerability detail | NVD | nvd.nist.gov | canonical, analysis |
Vendor Comments And Credit
Discovery Credit
CNA: Michał Majchrowicz (AFINE Team) (en)
CNA: Marcin Wyczechowski (AFINE Team) (en)
There are currently no legacy QID mappings associated with this CVE.