Medium severity · published Mar 6, 2026
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 symbol data
5.5
CVSS
0.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
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.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
Required
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.2% · higher than 16% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
BI
Binutils · Gnu
through 2.46 · source: NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-69651
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-69651
sourceware.org
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=33698
Exploit
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=33700
sourceware.org
https://sourceware.org/git/?p=binutils-gdb.git;a=commitdiff;h=81e90cf63a10ad11772c2437c8f2a88f1a00c739
sourceware.org
https://sourceware.org/git/?p=binutils-gdb.git;a=commitdiff;h=ea4bc025abdba85a90e26e13f551c16a44bfa92
Patch
https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;h=ea4bc025abdba85a90e26e13f551c16a44bfa921
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