Vulnerability identifier: #VU37961

Vulnerability risk: Medium

CVSSv3.1: 6.8 [CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2017-16829

CWE-ID: CWE-125

Exploitation vector: Local

Exploit availability: No

Vulnerable software:
Binutils
Universal components / Libraries / Libraries used by multiple products

Vendor: GNU

Description

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to gain access to perform denial of service (DoS) attack.

The vulnerability exists due to a boundary condition within the elf-properties.c function in the Binary File Descriptor (BFD) library (aka libbfd), as distributed file. A remote attacker can create a specially crafted file, trick the victim into opening it, trigger out-of-bounds read error and crash the affected application.

Mitigation
Install update from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Binutils: 2.29.1

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External links
http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201811-17
http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=22307
http://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;h=cf54ebff3b7361989712fd9c0128a9b255578163

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Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

No. This vulnerability can be exploited locally. The attacker should have authentication credentials and successfully authenticate on the system.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.