CVE-2020-35493

A flaw was found in Binutils in bfd/pef.c. This flaw allows an attacker who can submit a crafted PEF file to be parsed by objdump to cause a heap buffer overflow, leading to an out-of-bounds read. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to system availability.

Binutils as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8's GCC Toolset 10 and Red Hat Developer Toolset 10 are not affected by this flaw because the versions shipped have already received the patch.

The issue is classified as low severity primarily because binutils is not typically exposed to untrusted inputs in most environments, limiting its exploitation potential. The memory leak in bfd_pef_parse_function_stubs only triggers during the parsing of malformed files, which would require an attacker to convince a user to process a malicious file. Moreover, binutils does not handle privileged operations, meaning exploitation is unlikely to lead to system compromise or escalation of privileges. Additionally, the impact is localized to the application itself, without affecting the broader system or network security.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.