CVE-2026-3442
MediumCVSS 6.1Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk17th percentile - higher than 17% of all known CVEs
Summary
A heap-based buffer overflow (out-of-bounds read) vulnerability was found in the bfd linker component of GNU Binutils. An attacker could exploit this by convincing a user to process a specially crafted malicious XCOFF object file.
Risk Assessment
Successful exploitation may lead to disclosure of sensitive information or cause the application to crash, resulting in an application-level denial of service.
Recommendation
It is recommended to immediately update GNU Binutils to the latest patched version. Also, avoid processing XCOFF files from untrusted sources.
Other vulnerabilities in GNU Binutils
See all- CVE-2025-69648Medium
GNU Binutils through 2.45.1 contains a denial-of-service vulnerability in readelf when processing a crafted binary with malformed DWARF .debug_rnglists data. A logic flaw in the DWARF parsing path causes readelf to repeatedly print the same warning without forward progress, resulting in a non-terminating output loop requiring manual interruption. No evidence of memory corruption or code execution was observed.
- CVE-2025-69647Medium
GNU Binutils readelf through 2.45.1 contains a denial-of-service vulnerability when processing a crafted binary with malformed DWARF loclists data. A logic flaw causes readelf to repeatedly print the same table output without progress, resulting in an unbounded output loop.
- CVE-2025-69652Medium
GNU Binutils through 2.46 readelf contains a vulnerability that leads to an abort (SIGABRT) when processing a crafted ELF binary with malformed DWARF abbrev or debug information. Due to incomplete state cleanup in process_debug_info(), an invalid debug_info_p state may propagate into DWARF attribute parsing routines, and an unexpected data length of zero triggers a fatal abort in byte_get_little_endian().
- CVE-2025-69651Medium
GNU Binutils through 2.46 readelf contains a vulnerability that leads to an invalid pointer free when processing a crafted ELF binary with malformed relocation or symbol data. The internal all_relocations array may remain partially uninitialized, and later process_got_section_contents() may attempt to free an invalid r_symbol pointer, triggering memory corruption checks in glibc and causing the program to terminate with SIGABRT. The impact is limited to denial of service; the issue is disputed by third parties because the observed behavior occurred only in pre-release code and did not affect any tagged version.
- CVE-2025-69646Medium
Binutils objdump contains a denial-of-service vulnerability when processing a crafted binary with malformed DWARF debug_rnglists data. A logic error in handling the debug_rnglists header causes objdump to repeatedly print the same warning and fail to terminate.
- CVE-2025-69644Medium
An issue was discovered in Binutils before 2.46. The objdump contains a denial-of-service vulnerability when processing a crafted binary with malformed debug information. A logic flaw in the handling of DWARF location list headers can cause objdump to enter an unbounded loop and produce endless output until manually interrupted. This allows a local attacker to cause excessive resource consumption by supplying a malicious input file.
- CVE-2025-1152Low
In GNU Binutils 2.43, the xstrdup function in xstrdup.c of the ld component causes a memory leak. The attack can be launched remotely but has high complexity and is difficult to exploit. The exploit has been publicly disclosed and may be used.
- CVE-2017-17126High
The load_debug_section function in readelf.c in GNU Binutils 2.29.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (invalid memory access and application crash) or possibly have unspecified other impact via an ELF file that lacks section headers.
- CVE-2017-17125High
GNU Binutils 2.29.1 has a mishandling issue with certain global symbols in nm.c and objdump.c, which can lead to application crashes or denial of service.
- CVE-2017-17124High
The _bfd_coff_read_string_table function in the BFD library (libbfd) in GNU Binutils 2.29.1 does not properly validate the size of the external string table, which can lead to denial of service or buffer overflow.
Original NVD description (English source)
A flaw was found in GNU Binutils. This vulnerability, a heap-based buffer overflow, specifically an out-of-bounds read, exists in the bfd linker component. An attacker could exploit this by convincing a user to process a specially crafted malicious XCOFF object file. Successful exploitation may lead to the disclosure of sensitive information or cause the application to crash, resulting in an application level denial of service.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

