CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2018-1166 — Joyent Smartos security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8

This vulnerability allows local attackers to escalate privileges on vulnerable installations of Joyent SmartOS release-20170803-20170803T064301Z. An attacker must first obtain the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target system in order to exploit this vulnerability. The specific flaw exists within the SMBIOC_TREE_RELE ioctl. The issue results from the lack of validating the existence of an object prior to performing operations on the object. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to execute code under the context of the host OS. Was ZDI-CAN-4984.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.0)
Published
2018-02-21
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
operating-system
Weaknesses
CWE-416, CWE-20

Affected products

  • joyent / smartos / 20170803

Matched remediation archetype

Use-after-free, double free, and expired resource use

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Trace ownership, references, callbacks, asynchronous tasks, and teardown paths around the affected object or resource.
  • Identify reachable inputs and timing or state transitions that can release the object while references remain.
  • Confirm affected builds, allocators, feature flags, architectures, and process privileges.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the maintained ownership or lifetime fix and rebuild all artifacts containing the affected native code.
  • Use explicit ownership, safe reference management, cancellation and join semantics, and idempotent teardown.
  • Add deterministic lifetime tests plus isolated sanitizer and concurrency coverage for shutdown and error paths.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.