Executive brief
GNU Binutils is a collection of binary tools used by developers and build systems to process compiled code. A buffer overflow vulnerability in the linker's ELF x86-64 relocation handler allows a local attacker to cause a denial of service or potentially execute arbitrary code by providing a malformed binary file during linking.
Technical details
The vulnerability is a buffer overflow in the elf_x86_64_relocate_section function within bfd/elf64-x86-64.c, triggered by improper handling of the relocation offset (roff) argument when processing malformed ELF relocations. The attack vector is local; an attacker must convince a developer or build system to process a specially crafted ELF binary file. Exploitation results in out-of-bounds heap read/write and potential segmentation faults. The fix is available in GNU Binutils 2.48 (commit 471130b39c03623ec6d78ece377ff4da3f6bfe7b), and upgrading is the recommended remediation.
Affected products
- GNU Binutils 2.47
Timeline
- 2026-09-14: disclosed
- 2026-09-14: patched: Fix available in version 2.48, commit 471130b39c03623ec6d78ece377ff4da3f6bfe7b