CVE-2025-31179 is a vulnerability identified in the open-source graphing utility gnuplot, specifically within the xstrftime() function. This function is responsible for formatting date and time strings, and the flaw causes a NULL pointer dereference, which results in a segmentation fault. When triggered, this leads to a crash of the gnuplot process, causing a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 6.2, categorized as medium severity. The attack vector is local (AV:L), meaning an attacker must have local access to the system to exploit it. No privileges are required (PR:N), no user interaction is needed (UI:N), and the scope is unchanged (S:U). The impact affects availability only (A:H), with no impact on confidentiality or integrity. There are no known exploits in the wild at this time, and no patches or vendor advisories have been linked yet. The vulnerability could be triggered by specially crafted inputs to the xstrftime() function, potentially by a local user or process invoking gnuplot with malicious parameters or data. This flaw could disrupt automated workflows or scientific computations relying on gnuplot, especially in environments where gnuplot is used for data visualization or reporting.

For European organizations, the primary impact of CVE-2025-31179 is a denial-of-service condition affecting systems running gnuplot. This can interrupt scientific research, engineering analysis, or any data visualization tasks dependent on gnuplot, potentially delaying critical decision-making or reporting. Since the vulnerability requires local access, the risk is higher in multi-user environments or shared systems where untrusted users may have access. The lack of confidentiality or integrity impact limits the risk to data breaches or manipulation, but availability disruptions can still cause operational and reputational damage. Organizations with automated pipelines or batch jobs invoking gnuplot could experience failures or crashes, impacting productivity. The absence of known exploits reduces immediate risk, but the medium severity score indicates that timely remediation is important to prevent exploitation if local access is gained by malicious actors.

1. Monitor official gnuplot repositories and security advisories for patches addressing CVE-2025-31179 and apply updates promptly once available. 2. Restrict local system access to trusted users only, especially on systems where gnuplot is installed and used, to reduce the attack surface. 3. Implement strict user privilege separation and sandboxing to limit the ability of unprivileged users to invoke or manipulate gnuplot processes. 4. Audit and monitor logs for abnormal gnuplot crashes or segmentation faults that could indicate attempted exploitation. 5. Where possible, validate and sanitize inputs passed to gnuplot to prevent malformed data from triggering the vulnerability. 6. Consider isolating critical gnuplot workloads in containerized or virtualized environments to limit impact scope. 7. Educate system administrators and users about the vulnerability and the importance of local access controls. 8. Review and harden automated workflows that rely on gnuplot to handle failures gracefully and alert on unexpected terminations.