Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-90830 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-90830 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-90830?
- Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 5.3, published 14 September 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Gnu Binutils 2.47.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-90830?
- No fixed version is recorded yet. Check the vendor's advisory in the references below. If you run it, Junglewise drafts a mitigation that fits your setup and applies it once you approve, with senior security engineers behind it.
- How is CVE-2026-90830 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-90830?
- Check whether you run Gnu Binutils at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
A null pointer dereference vulnerability exists in the _bfd_write_merged_section function (bfd/merge.c:1121) when processing malformed ELF files with merged sections. The vulnerability is triggered when using the linker with `--shared -z now` options on an object file with inconsistent merge state, causing a NULL-derived pointer dereference. The attack is local and requires the attacker to provide a malformed ELF object file to be linked. An attacker can crash the linker or build process. The issue appears to be an incomplete fix for a prior vulnerability (bug 33477) and remains unfixed as of the advisory date.
Affected products
- GNU Binutils 2.47
Timeline
- 2026-07-28: disclosed: Bug reported via Sourceware Bugzilla
- 2026-09-14: advisory: CVE-2026-90830 published