CVE-2026-16599
Published:August 25, 2026
Updated:September 24, 2026
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
Related Resources (6)
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Contact UsCVSS v4
Base Score:
5.1
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Attack Requirements
NONE
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
ACTIVE
Vulnerable System Confidentiality
NONE
Vulnerable System Integrity
NONE
Vulnerable System Availability
LOW
Subsequent System Confidentiality
NONE
Subsequent System Integrity
NONE
Subsequent System Availability
NONE
CVSS v3
Base Score:
4.3
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
REQUIRED
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
LOW
Weakness Type (CWE)
Unchecked Input for Loop Condition
EPSS
Base Score:
0.38