CVE-2018-18606

MEDIUM

GNU Binutils - NULL Pointer Dereference

Title source: rule

Description

An issue was discovered in the merge_strings function in merge.c in the Binary File Descriptor (BFD) library (aka libbfd), as distributed in GNU Binutils 2.31. There is a NULL pointer dereference in _bfd_add_merge_section when attempting to merge sections with large alignments. A specially crafted ELF allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service, as demonstrated by ld.

References (7)

[Patch] https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git%3Bh=45a0eaf77022963d639d6d19871dbab7b79703fc

[Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry] http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/105754

[Third Party Advisory] https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20190307-0003/

[Exploit, Issue Tracking, Third Party Advisory] https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23806

[Vendor Advisory] https://usn.ubuntu.com/4336-1/

[Mailing List] http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-10/msg00072.html

[Mailing List] http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00008.html

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5

EPSS 0.0068

EPSS Percentile 71.3%

Attack Vector LOCAL

CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Classification

CWE

CWE-476

Status published

Affected Products (5)

gnu/binutils

debian/debian_linux

debian/debian_linux

debian/debian_linux

netapp/data_ontap

Timeline

Published Oct 23, 2018

Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026