Executive brief
radare2 is a reverse engineering framework used to analyze executable programs. A flaw in its NE executable parser allows a specially crafted binary file to trigger an infinite loop that exhausts system memory and CPU, causing the application to hang or crash. An attacker can trigger this by opening a malicious binary file.
Technical details
The NE relocation fixup-chain parser in radare2 versions prior to 6.2.0 lacks iteration limits and cycle detection. A crafted NE executable with an in-bounds self-referential relocation entry (where offset points back to itself instead of reaching 0xffff) causes the parser to repeatedly process the same relocation, allocating memory on each iteration. The vulnerability is reachable via the default binary loading process when a crafted NE file is opened.
Affected products
- radare radare2 prior to 6.2.0
Timeline
- 2026-07-12: disclosed
- 2026-09-22: patched: Fixed in version 6.2.0 via commit 93d794c