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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2016-10254 json

The allocate_elf function in common.h in elfutils before 0.168 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a crafted E…

published 2017-03-23 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-1439

cvss
5.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.6%
EPSS 1.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 75%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The allocate_elf function in common.h in elfutils before 0.168 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a crafted ELF file, which triggers a memory allocation failure.

Patch / fix

  • elfutils Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 0.168-0.2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-10254

  • elfutils Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 0.158-0ubuntu5.3
  • elfutils Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 0.165-3ubuntu1.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2016-10254

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • elfutils SLES for SAP 12 SP4, SLES for SAP 12 SP3, SLES 12 SP4 +5 more 0.158-7.7.2

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2019:1733-1

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-2016-10254 updated cvss 3.3

elfutils: Memory allocation failure in allocate_elf

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 elfutils Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 elfutils, elfutils-libs, elfutils-libelf Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 elfutils, elfutils-libs, elfutils-libelf, elfutils-default-yama-scope
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”

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

Exploit prediction

1.57% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 75% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 5.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

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.