CVE-2017-11164

Publication date 11 July 2017

Last updated 7 August 2026

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

In PCRE 8.41, the OP_KETRMAX feature in the match function in pcre_exec.c allows stack exhaustion (uncontrolled recursion) when processing a crafted regular expression.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
pcre3	26.04 LTS resolute	Not in release
	25.10 questing	Ignored end of life, was needed
	25.04 plucky	Ignored end of life, was needed
	24.10 oracular	Ignored end of life, was needed
	24.04 LTS noble	Ignored see notes
	23.10 mantic	Ignored end of life, was needed
	23.04 lunar	Ignored end of life, was needed
	22.10 kinetic	Ignored end of life, was needed
	22.04 LTS jammy	Ignored see notes
	21.10 impish	Ignored end of life
	21.04 hirsute	Ignored end of life
	20.10 groovy	Ignored end of life
	20.04 LTS focal	Ignored end of standard support, was needed
	19.10 eoan	Ignored end of life
	19.04 disco	Ignored end of life
	18.10 cosmic	Ignored end of life
	18.04 LTS bionic	Ignored end of standard support, was needed
	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 end of standard support, was needed
	14.04 LTS trusty	Ignored end of standard support

Notes

sbeattie

reproducer in oss-security posting. to exploit this requires an application take regular expressions as untrusted input (not just the string to match against), which is generally not safe to do with pcre.

mdeslaur

as of 2026-07-21, there is not fix for this issue, it is a limitation of pcre3. Per the author: "Stack exhaustion is a FEP (frequently encountered problem) in PCRE1 (the 8.xx series). There are various limiting options that the user can apply to limit stack usage." We will not be fixing this issue in Ubuntu. Marking as ignored.

Severity score breakdown

CVSS version: CVSS v3.0

Base score 7.5 · High

Base metrics

Parameter	Value
Attack vector	Network
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	None
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality impact	None
Integrity impact	None
Availability impact	High

Scores

Parameter	Value
Base score	7.5 · High
Exploitability score	-
Impact score	-

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