5.1

CVE-2026-16599: gnu wget Unchecked Input for Loop Condition

CVSS: 5.1v4.0MediumDeferred
AliasesMGASA-2026-0386SUSE-SU-2026:23455-1SUSE-SU-2026:23520-1
Published 25-08-2026Last modified 25-08-2026
Open JSON

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-16599 is a medium (CVSS 5.1) Unchecked Input for Loop Condition vulnerability in gnu wget. EPSS estimates a 0.38% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 29.8% of scored vulnerabilities.

Overall risk
20/100
0100
Low · default modelHow is this calculated?
CVSS score
5.1/10
010
Medium · v4.0 (CVE.org)
EPSS score
0.38%
0%100%
Low · -0.01 pp in 30 days
KEVNot listedIn no KEV catalog
RansomwareNone recordedNo known use recorded
Public exploits0No public exploits recorded

Timeline

  1. 25-08-2026
    PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
  2. 25-08-2026
    Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

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

CVSS metrics

6 scores · 6 sources · 1 version

EPSS trend

Probability

0.38%

Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days

Percentile

30%

Versus all other CVEs

30-day change

-0.01 pp

From 0.38% on 18-09-2026

18-09-202618-10-2026
EPSS score
0.38%

Known exploited

Compare KEV catalogs

Not in any of the 3 tracked catalogs.

Public exploits

0 found

No public exploits indexed.

Weaknesses

CWE · root cause

Affected systems

Suse8 products
  • wget&distro=SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.5< 1.20.3-150000.3.40.1
  • wget&distro=SUSE Linux Enterprise Module for Basesystem 15 SP7< 1.24.5-150700.3.12.1
  • wget&distro=SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.0< 1.25.0-160000.4.1
  • wget&distro=SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications 16.0< 1.25.0-160000.4.1
  • wget&distro=SUSE Linux Enterprise Server LTSS Extended Security 12 SP5< 1.14-21.31.1
Mageia2 products
  • wget< 1.25.0-2.3.mga10
  • wget< 1.21.4-1.5.mga9
Opensuse2 products
  • wget&distro=openSUSE Leap 16.0< 1.25.0-160000.4.1
  • wget&distro=openSUSE Tumbleweed< 1.25.0-7.1
Chainguard1 product
  • wget< 1.25.0-r17
Debian1 product
  • wgetAll versions (No fix recorded)
Gnu1 product
Ubuntu1 product
  • wgetAll versions (No fix recorded)
Wolfi1 product
  • wget< 1.25.0-r17

8 vendors · 17 products

References

22 links
Show all 22 references