CVE-2025-69651: 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…

medium5.5CVSS 3.1

AVLACLPRNUIRSUCNINAH

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.

Affected

4 ranges

Vendor	Product	Version range	Fixed in
debian	binutils	—	—
gnu	binutils	<= 2.46	—
msrc	azl3_binutils_2.41-10_on_azure_linux_3.0	—	—
msrc	cbl2_binutils_2.37-20_on_cbl_mariner_2.0	—	—

CVSS provenance

nvdv3.15.5MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

osv5.5MEDIUM