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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2025-69651 json

GNU Binutils thru 2.46 readelf contains a vulnerability that leads to an invalid pointer free when processing a crafted ELF binary with mal…

published 2026-03-06 8 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2025-208347

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 19%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

GNU Binutils thru 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. If dump_relocations returns early due to parsing errors, the internal all_relocations array may remain partially uninitialized. 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. No evidence of further memory corruption or code execution was observed; the impact is limited to denial of service. NOTE: this is disputed by third parties because the observed behavior occurred only in pre-release code and did not affect any tagged version.

Patch / fix

  • binutils Debian 14 2.46-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-69651

  • 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

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-2025-69651 updated cvss 2.8

binutils: Binutils: Denial of Service via crafted ELF binary processing

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 binutils Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 gdb, binutils, gdb-gdbserver
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • 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 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8, openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • 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 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

0.27% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 19% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • sourceware.org https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=33700 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 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/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.