CVE-2025-69651
Received Received - Intake
Use-After-Free in GNU Binutils readelf Causes Denial of Service

Publication date: 2026-03-06

Last updated on: 2026-03-19

Assigner: MITRE

Description
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.
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Meta Information
Published
2026-03-06
Last Modified
2026-03-19
Generated
2026-06-16
AI Q&A
2026-03-06
EPSS Evaluated
2026-06-15
NVD
CVE-2025-69651
EUVD
EUVD-2025-208347
Affected Vendors & Products
Showing 1 associated CPE
Vendor Product Version / Range
gnu binutils to 2.46 (inc)
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
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KEV
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CWE ID Description
CWE-476 The product dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid but is NULL.
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Executive Summary

This vulnerability exists in GNU Binutils through version 2.46, specifically in the readelf tool. It occurs when readelf processes a specially crafted ELF binary containing malformed relocation or symbol data. If an error happens during parsing, an internal array called all_relocations may remain partially uninitialized. Later, when the program tries to free a pointer related to these relocations, it may attempt to free an invalid pointer, causing memory corruption checks in the underlying glibc library to trigger and the program to terminate unexpectedly with a SIGABRT signal.

Importantly, no further memory corruption or code execution beyond this termination was observed, so the vulnerability mainly causes the program to crash.

Impact Analysis

The primary impact of this vulnerability is a denial of service condition. When processing a maliciously crafted ELF binary, the readelf tool may crash due to an invalid pointer free, causing it to terminate unexpectedly.

There is no evidence that this vulnerability can lead to arbitrary code execution or further memory corruption, so the impact is limited to the inability to successfully complete the readelf operation.

Compliance Impact

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Detection Guidance

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Mitigation Strategies

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