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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2018-13033 json

The Binary File Descriptor (BFD) library (aka libbfd), as distributed in GNU Binutils 2.30, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of se…

published 2018-07-01 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-4983

cvss
5.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.9%
EPSS 2.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 87%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The Binary File Descriptor (BFD) library (aka libbfd), as distributed in GNU Binutils 2.30, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (excessive memory allocation and application crash) via a crafted ELF file, as demonstrated by _bfd_elf_parse_attributes in elf-attrs.c and bfd_malloc in libbfd.c. This can occur during execution of nm.

Patch / fix

  • binutils Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.30.90.20180627-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-13033

  • binutils Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 2.30-21ubuntu1~18.04.3
  • binutils Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 2.26.1-1ubuntu1~16.04.8+esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-13033

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

  • binutils RHEL 7 2.27-34.base.el7

red hat advisories RHSA-2018:3032

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-2018-13033 updated cvss 2.8

binutils: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption in execution of nm

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 binutils Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 mingw-binutils, mingw32-binutils, mingw64-binutils, mingw-binutils-generic
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client (v. 7) binutils 2.27-34.base.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client Optional (v. 7) binutils-devel 2.27-34.base.el7, binutils-debuginfo 2.27-34.base.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode (v. 7) binutils 2.27-34.base.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode Optional (v. 7) binutils-devel 2.27-34.base.el7, binutils-debuginfo 2.27-34.base.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM and IBM Power LE (POWER9) Server (v. 7) binutils 2.27-34.base.el7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 7) binutils 2.27-34.base.el7
    +1 more products
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 7) binutils 2.27-34.base.el7
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:3032
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 binutils, binutils220 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 binutils
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

2.95% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 87% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • sourceware.org https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23361 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

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-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

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.