CVE-2017-20205CWE-121

Valve Source SDK Stack-Based Buffer Overflow RCE

Critical · published October 15, 2025

CVSS v4.0
9.2
EPSS
1%
Percentile
52.3
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

Valve's Source SDK (source-sdk-2013)'s ragdoll model parsing logic contains a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability.The tokenizer function `nexttoken` copies characters from an input string into a fixed-size stack buffer without performing bounds checks. When `ParseKeyValue` processes a collisionpair rule longer than the destination buffer (256 bytes), an overflow of the stack buffer `szToken` can occur and overwrite the function return address. A remote attacker can trigger the vulnerable code by supplying a specially crafted ragdoll model which causes the oversized collisionpair rule to be parsed, resulting in remote code execution on affected clients or servers. Valve has addressed this issue in many of their Source games, but independently-developed games must manually apply patch.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v4.0
9.2 · CRITICAL
Vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
EPSS
0.00693 · 52.3th percentile
Weakness
CWE-121 · Stack-based Buffer Overflow
Published
2025-10-15T01:23Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 15 OCT 01:23Z
    Valve Source SDK Stack-Based Buffer Overflow RCE
    cvelistv5