CVE-2016-7420

Publication date 16 September 2016

Last updated 25 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

Crypto++ (aka cryptopp) through 5.6.4 does not document the requirement for a compile-time NDEBUG definition disabling the many assert calls that are unintended in production use, which might allow context-dependent attackers to obtain sensitive information by leveraging access to process memory after an assertion failure, as demonstrated by reading a core dump.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
libcrypto++	18.04 LTS bionic	Ignored compiled with -NDEBUG
	17.10 artful	Ignored end of life
	17.04 zesty	Ignored end of life
	16.10 yakkety	Ignored end of life
	16.04 LTS xenial	Ignored compiled with -NDEBUG
	14.04 LTS trusty	Ignored compiled with -NDEBUG
	12.04 LTS precise	Ignored end of life

Notes

ratliff

precise, trusty, xenial, yakkety all build using -NDEBUG

msalvatore

I'm retiring this CVE and marking each release as "ignored". I've confirmed ratliff's above comment. In addition, the fix for this CVE is simply an update to the documentation.

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	5.9 · Medium
Attack vector	Network
Attack complexity	High
Privileges required	None
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	High
Integrity impact	None
Availability impact	None
Vector	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N