Buffer overflow in PCRE - CVE-2015-8384
Published: February 16, 2026
Vulnerability identifier: #VU122838
CSH Severity: Medium
CVSS v4: 5.1 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:L/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2015-8384
CWE-ID: CWE-119
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform a denial of service attack.
The vulnerability exists due to PCRE mishandles the /(?J)(?'d'(?'d'g{d}))/ pattern and related patterns with certain recursive back references. A remote attacker can send a specially crafted regular expression to cause a denial of service (buffer overflow).
Affected software
PCRE
Db2 Big SQL
Db2 Big SQL
How to mitigate CVE-2015-8384
Install updates from vendor's website.
PCRE - update to 8.38
Db2 Big SQL - update to 7.6.2
Db2 Big SQL - update to 7.6.2
External References
- http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-2750.html
- http://vcs.pcre.org/pcre/code/trunk/ChangeLog?view=markup
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/11/29/1
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016:1132
- https://bto.bluecoat.com/security-advisory/sa128
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201607-02