CVE-2026-16599

Denial of Service in GNU wget

Published Aug 25, 2026 CVSS 4.0 · 5.1 Medium EPSS < 1% KEV · Not listed
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

Remediation

No solution or workaround provided in the CVE record

Tracking

Sign in to view the affected projects.

Advisories

No advisories available
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
Weaknesses CWE-835
References
Metrics threat_severity

None

cvssV3_1

{'score': 6.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H'}

threat_severity

Moderate

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Gnu
Gnu wget
Vendors & Products Gnu
Gnu wget
Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}

Type Values Removed Values Added
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
Title Denial of Service in GNU wget
Weaknesses CWE-606
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 5.1, 'vector': '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'}

Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
CERT-PL
Published
Updated
Aug 25, 2026, 2:51 PM
Reserved
Jul 22, 2026, 2:11 PM
Status
Deferred
Published
Aug 25, 2026, 3:16 PM
Modified
Aug 28, 2026, 3:26 PM
Severity
Moderate
Public date
Aug 25, 2026, 2:17 PM