CVE-2016-2851

critical

Published 2016-04-07 · Modified 2026-05-06

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CVSS v3

9.8

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

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

10.0

Description

Integer overflow in proto.c in libotr before 4.1.1 on 64-bit platforms allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory corruption and application crash) or execute arbitrary code via a series of large OTR messages, which triggers a heap-based buffer overflow.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

97%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-39550 dos multiple

X41 D-Sec GmbH · 2016-03-10

libotr 4.1.0 - Memory Corruption

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

OS impact

SUSE Affected 3 releases

Version	Status	Fixed in
42.1	Affected	—
13.2	Affected	—
—	Affected	—

Debian Mixed 7 releases

Version	Status	Fixed in
trixie	Fixed	`4.1.1-1`
sid	Fixed	`4.1.1-1`
forky	Fixed	`4.1.1-1`
bullseye	Fixed	`4.1.1-1`
bookworm	Fixed	`4.1.1-1`
8.0	Affected	—
7.0	Affected	—

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions	Fixed
cypherpunks	libotr	`{"endIncluding":"4.1.0"}`

References

CWEs

CWE-119

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.