CVE-2025-15281

A flaw was found in glibc. When the wordexp function is called with the flags WRDE_REUSE and WRDE_APPEND, it may return uninitialized memory. If the caller inspects the we_wordv array or calls the wordfree function to free the allocated memory, the process will abort, resulting in a denial of service.

To exploit this issue, an attacker needs to find an application linked to the glibc library that is using the wordexp function with the flags WRDE_REUSE and WRDE_APPEND. Also, calls to wordexp using both flags never worked correctly and thus the existence of applications that make use of this feature is unlikely. There is no known application vulnerable to this issue.

Furthermore, this flaw will result in a denial of service with no other security impact.

Due to these reasons, this vulnerability has been rated with a low severity.

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.

To mitigate this issue, consider refactoring the use of the wordexp function to not use the WRDE_REUSE and WRDE_APPEND flags together.