Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-90831 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-90831 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-90831?
- 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-2026-90831?
- 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-2026-90831 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-90831?
- 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
The vulnerability is a memory corruption issue in the _bfd_elf_strtab_delref function in bfd/elf-strtab.c within GNU Binutils 2.47. It is triggered when the linker processes a malformed ELF object file with versioned symbols and the --version-exports-section flag enabled. The attack vector is local and requires the attacker to provide a malicious object file to be linked with specific command-line options. The vulnerability causes a BFD_ASSERT failure manifesting as a segmentation fault, disrupting the linking process. As of the advisory date, the project had not yet issued a patch, though a proof-of-concept has been publicly disclosed.
Affected products
- GNU Binutils 2.47
Timeline
- 2026-07-28: disclosed: Bug report filed with proof-of-concept
- 2026-09-14: advisory: CVE-2026-90831 published on NVD