#VU39086 NULL pointer dereference in Binutils - CVE-2017-8394

Vulnerability identifier: #VU39086

Vulnerability risk: Medium

CVSSv4.0: 6.6 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/U:Green]

CVE-ID: CVE-2017-8394

CWE-ID: CWE-476

Exploitation vector: Network

Exploit availability: No

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

Vendor: GNU

Description

The vulnerability allows a remote non-authenticated attacker to perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.

The Binary File Descriptor (BFD) library (aka libbfd), as distributed in GNU Binutils 2.28, is vulnerable to an invalid read of size 4 due to NULL pointer dereferencing of _bfd_elf_large_com_section. This vulnerability causes programs that conduct an analysis of binary programs using the libbfd library, such as objcopy, to crash.

Mitigation
Install update from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Binutils: 2.28

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External links
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201709-02
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=21414

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Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

Yes. This vulnerability can be exploited by a remote non-authenticated attacker via the Internet.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

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