CVE-2017-15023

Publication date 5 October 2017

Last updated 25 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

read_formatted_entries in dwarf2.c in the Binary File Descriptor (BFD) library (aka libbfd), as distributed in GNU Binutils 2.29, does not properly validate the format count, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and application crash) via a crafted ELF file, related to concat_filename.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
binutils	19.10 eoan	Not affected
	19.04 disco	Not affected
	18.10 cosmic	Not affected
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not affected
	17.10 artful	Ignored end of life
	17.04 zesty	Ignored end of life
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not affected
	14.04 LTS trusty	Not affected

Notes

mdeslaur

incomplete fix resulted in CVE-2017-15939

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
binutils	Upstream: https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;h=c361faae8d964db951b7100cada4dcdc983df1bf

Severity score breakdown

CVSS version: CVSS v3.0

Base score 5.5 · Medium

Base metrics

Parameter	Value
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	None
User interaction	Required
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality impact	None
Integrity impact	None
Availability impact	High

Scores

Parameter	Value
Base score	5.5 · Medium
Exploitability score	-
Impact score	-

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H