CVE-2025-69649

A flaw was found in binutils. Processing a specially crafted ELF binary file containing malformed header fields with the readelf program can trigger a NULL pointer dereference, causing a crash and resulting in a denial of service.

This issue is classified with a low severity primarily because binutils is not typically exposed to untrusted inputs in most environments, limiting the possibility of exploitation. Additionally, this NULL pointer dereference is only triggered during the parsing of a specially crafted file, requiring an attacker to convince a user to process this file with readelf. Furthermore, binutils does not handle privileged operations, meaning that exploitation is unlikely to lead to system compromise or escalation of privileges. Also, the impact is limited 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.

To mitigate this vulnerability, do not process untrusted, unverified or externally supplied ELF binaries with the readelf program.