Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2025-69649 json

GNU Binutils thru 2.46 readelf contains a null pointer dereference vulnerability when processing a crafted ELF binary with malformed header…

published 2026-03-06 8 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2025-208345

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 23%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

GNU Binutils thru 2.46 readelf contains a null pointer dereference vulnerability when processing a crafted ELF binary with malformed header fields. During relocation processing, an invalid or null section pointer may be passed into display_relocations(), resulting in a segmentation fault (SIGSEGV) and abrupt termination. No evidence of memory corruption beyond the null pointer dereference, nor any possibility of code execution, was observed.

Patch / fix

  • binutils Debian 14 2.46-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-69649

  • binutils hummingbird 1 2.45.1-5.hum1
  • binutils-gold hummingbird 1 2.45.1-5.hum1
  • binutils-gprofng hummingbird 1 2.45.1-5.hum1

red hat advisories RHSA-2026:7098

  • binutils openSUSE Tumbleweed 2.47-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:11932-1

  • binutils Azure Linux 3.0 2.41-11

azure linux advisories AZL-79571

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2025-69649 updated cvss 3.3

binutils: NULL pointer dereference in readelf via crafted ELF binary with malformed header fields

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 binutils Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 gdb, binutils, gdb-gdbserver Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 gdb, binutils, gdb-headless, gdb-gdbserver, mingw-binutils, mingw32-binutils, +10 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 gdb, binutils, gdb-minimal, gdb-headless, binutils-gold, gdb-gdbserver, +10 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 gdb, binutils, mingw-binutils, mingw32-binutils, mingw64-binutils, gcc-toolset-15-binutils Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 rhcos
    affected: workaround, no fix available “To mitigate this vulnerability, do not process untrusted, unverified or externally supplied ELF binaries with the readelf program.”
  • Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhoai/odh-dashboard-rhel9
    under investigation
  • Red Hat Hardened Images binutils 2.45.1-5.hum1, binutils-gold 2.45.1-5.hum1, binutils-gprofng 2.45.1-5.hum1
    fixed: vendor fix “To mitigate this vulnerability, do not process untrusted, unverified or externally supplied ELF binaries with the readelf program.” RHSA-2026:7098

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
8 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.31% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 23% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • sourceware.org https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=33697 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CNA 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.