Reference page — cumulative record through Monday, October 19, 2026 UTC. Reference pages update as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record.

CVE-2019-16905

CVE-2019-16905HIGH

n/a n/a — OpenSSH 7.7 through 7.9 and 8.x before 8.1, when compiled with an experimental key type, has a pre-authentication integer overflow if a c…

  AV  AC  PR  UI  S  C  I  A   CVSS    EPSS   %ile   KEV
   L   L   L   N  U  H  H  H    7.8   .0223   82.4     —

AFFECTED
  Product  Versions  Fixed
  n/a      n/a –     —

TIMELINE
  Sep 26  Reserved by mitre
  Oct 9   Published (CNA: mitre)
  Oct 14  ENRICHED — CVE-2019-16905. Received CVSS 7.8 and CPE data from NVD.
  Oct 14  EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2019-16905. Public exploit reference added.

CWE-190 · CNA: mitre · CVSS v3.1 · 11 references · NVD status: Modified

Description

OpenSSH 7.7 through 7.9 and 8.x before 8.1, when compiled with an experimental key type, has a pre-authentication integer overflow if a client or server is configured to use a crafted XMSS key. This leads to memory corruption and local code execution because of an error in the XMSS key parsing algorithm. NOTE: the XMSS implementation is considered experimental in all released OpenSSH versions, and there is no supported way to enable it when building portable OpenSSH.

Lifecycle

Complete event history — 4 events, chronological
Date	Event	Detail
September 26, 2019	Reserved	Reserved by mitre
October 9, 2019	Published	Published (CNA: mitre)
October 14, 2026	ENRICHED	ENRICHED — CVE-2019-16905. Received CVSS 7.8 and CPE data from NVD.
October 14, 2026	EXPLOIT PUBLISHED	EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2019-16905. Public exploit reference added.

Affected

Affected products and packages — 1 row
Vendor	Product / Package	Ecosystem	Version introduced	Fixed
n/a	n/a	—	n/a	—

Weaknesses

CWE-190

References (11)

https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1153537 [Issue Tracking, Third Party Advisory]
https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-398330.html
https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-412672.html
https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/pdf/ssa-412672.pdf [Third Party Advisory]
https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.bin/ssh/sshkey-xmss.c [Release Notes, Vendor Advisory]
https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.bin/ssh/sshkey-xmss.c.diff?r1=1.5&r2=1.6&f=h [Patch]
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201911-01 [Third Party Advisory]
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20191024-0003/ [Third Party Advisory]
https://ssd-disclosure.com/archives/4033/ssd-advisory-openssh-pre-auth-xmss-integer-overflow [Exploit, Third Party Advisory]
https://www.openssh.com/releasenotes.html [Release Notes]
https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/10/09/1 [Mailing List, Third Party Advisory]

Authoritative record: CVE-2019-16905 at cve.org

Weaknesses: CWE-190

About this page

This is a reference page, not a dated page of record. It assembles the complete lifecycle of CVE-2019-16905 from the CVE Program record, NVD enrichment, the CISA KEV catalog, EPSS, and OSV advisories. The box score's numbers (CVSS, EPSS, KEV status) are current as of Monday, October 19, 2026 UTC and are re-derived as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record. The authoritative source for this identifier is cve.org.