VulnerabilityPublished 5 Jun 2025

CVE-2025-5648: Radare2 · Memory Corruption

Affects Radare2Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 2.0 Low.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 10:12 UTC

CVSS 4.0 base score

2.0Low

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 16% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: High
Attack Requirements: None
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Vulnerable system confidentiality: None
Vulnerable system integrity: None
Vulnerable system availability: Low
Subsequent system confidentiality: None
Subsequent system integrity: None
Subsequent system availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable system is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or through terminal emulation (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., using social engineering techniques to trick a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: High: The successful attack depends on the evasion or circumvention of security-enhancing techniques in place that would otherwise hinder the attack. These include: Evasion of exploit mitigation techniques, for example, circumvention of address space randomization (ASLR) or data execution prevention (DEP) must be performed for the attack to be successful; Obtaining target-specific secrets. The attacker must gather some target-specific secret before the attack can be successful. A secret is any piece of information that cannot be obtained through any amount of reconnaissance. To obtain the secret the attacker must perform additional attacks or break otherwise secure measures (e.g. knowledge of a secret key may be needed to break a crypto channel). This operation must be performed for each attacked target.
Attack Requirements: None: The successful attack does not depend on the deployment and execution conditions of the vulnerable system. The attacker can expect to be able to reach the vulnerability and execute the exploit under all or most instances of the vulnerability.
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker requires privileges that provide basic capabilities that are typically limited to settings and resources owned by a single low-privileged user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges has the ability to access only non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without interaction from any human user, other than the attacker.
Vulnerable system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the Vulnerable System are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Subsequent System or all confidentiality impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Subsequent System or all integrity impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the Subsequent System or all availability impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v4.0 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 5 Jun 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
GitHubradareorg/radare2`pkg:github/radareorg/radare2`Other threats	Affected =5.9.9	Fixed in–

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AI-suggested

To mitigate this vulnerability, European organizations should ensure that all instances of Radare2 are updated to versions beyond 5.9.9 where the patch addressing CVE-2025-5648 has been applied. Since the '-T' parameter is experimental and known to be unstable, users should avoid using this argument unless absolutely necessary and only in controlled environments. Access controls should be enforced to restrict local access to systems running Radare2, limiting the potential for exploitation by unauthorized users. Additionally, organizations should monitor and audit usage of Radare2 to detect any unusual activity involving the '-T' parameter. Security teams should educate users about the risks associated with experimental features in security tools and encourage the use of stable releases. Employing runtime protections such as AddressSanitizer during development and testing can help detect memory corruption issues early, although it is noted that the race condition is primarily a concern under ASAN. Finally, maintaining a robust patch management process to promptly apply updates is essential.

Description

A vulnerability was found in Radare2 5.9.9. It has been classified as problematic. Affected is the function r_cons_pal_init in the library /libr/cons/pal.c of the component radiff2. The manipulation of the argument -T leads to memory corruption. An attack has to be approached locally. The complexity of an attack is rather high. The exploitability is told to be difficult. The exploit has been disclosed to the public and may be used. The real existence of this vulnerability is still doubted at the moment. The name of the patch is 5705d99cc1f23f36f9a84aab26d1724010b97798. It is recommended to apply a patch to fix this issue. The documentation explains that the parameter -T is experimental and "crashy". Further analysis has shown "the race is not a real problem unless you use asan". A new warning has been added.

Impact

For European organizations, the impact of this vulnerability is limited due to several factors. Radare2 is primarily a reverse engineering and binary analysis tool used by security researchers, developers, and malware analysts rather than a widespread production system component. The requirement for local access and the high complexity of exploitation further reduce the risk of this vulnerability being leveraged in targeted attacks. However, organizations with security teams or researchers using Radare2 internally could face potential risks if untrusted users gain local access to systems running the vulnerable version. Exploitation could lead to memory corruption, potentially causing application crashes or, in rare cases, arbitrary code execution, which might compromise the confidentiality or integrity of analysis environments. Given the low severity and the niche usage of Radare2, the overall threat to European enterprises is minimal but should not be ignored in environments where Radare2 is actively used.

Summary

CVE-2025-5648 is a memory corruption vulnerability identified in Radare2 version 5.9.9, specifically within the function r_cons_pal_init located in the /libr/cons/pal.c file of the radiff2 component. The vulnerability arises from improper handling of the '-T' argument, which is an experimental parameter known to be unstable and potentially crash-inducing. When this argument is manipulated, it can lead to memory corruption. Exploitation requires local access to the system, and the attack complexity is considered high due to the difficulty in reliably triggering the vulnerability. Furthermore, the exploitability is low, and no user interaction or authentication bypass is involved. The vulnerability has been publicly disclosed, but its practical existence and impact remain somewhat uncertain, as indicated by the note that the race condition is not a significant issue unless AddressSanitizer (ASAN) is used. A patch has been committed (identified by commit hash 5705d99cc1f23f36f9a84aab26d1724010b97798) to address this issue, and a warning has been added to the documentation to highlight the experimental and unstable nature of the '-T' parameter. The CVSS 4.0 base score is 2.0, reflecting a low severity rating, with attack vector limited to local (AV:L), high attack complexity (AC:H), and requiring low privileges (PR:L). No known exploits are currently active in the wild.

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 7 Jul 2025, 03:40 UTC

Technical details

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