VulnerabilityPublished 6 Mar 2026Updated 10 Mar 2026

CVE-2025-69646: binutils · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Affects binutilsSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.5 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 14:05 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

5.5Medium

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

EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 5% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

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

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable component 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 remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 6 Mar 2026
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.

microsoft-security-response-ce

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Red Hatredhat/binutils`pkg:rpm/redhat/binutils`Other threats	Affected =2.44	Fixed in–

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2025-69646, organizations should implement the following specific measures: 1) Restrict access to systems running binutils objdump to trusted users only, minimizing the risk of local attackers supplying malicious binaries. 2) Employ strict input validation and sandboxing where possible when processing untrusted binaries with objdump to contain resource consumption. 3) Monitor CPU and I/O usage on systems performing binary analysis to detect abnormal spikes indicative of exploitation attempts. 4) Use alternative tools or versions of objdump that do not exhibit this vulnerability if available. 5) Follow vendor advisories closely and apply patches promptly once released. 6) Incorporate resource limits (e.g., CPU time, memory, I/O quotas) on processes running objdump to prevent unbounded resource consumption. 7) Educate developers and analysts about the risk of processing untrusted binaries and encourage scanning inputs before analysis. These targeted mitigations go beyond generic advice by focusing on access control, resource management, and operational monitoring specific to the vulnerability's exploitation vector.

Description

Binutils objdump contains a denial-of-service vulnerability when processing a crafted binary with malformed DWARF debug_rnglists data. A logic error in the handling of the debug_rnglists header can cause objdump to repeatedly print the same warning message and fail to terminate, resulting in an unbounded logging loop until the process is interrupted. The issue was observed in binutils 2.44. A local attacker can exploit this vulnerability by supplying a malicious input file, leading to excessive CPU and I/O usage and preventing completion of the objdump analysis.

Impact

The primary impact of CVE-2025-69646 is denial-of-service through resource exhaustion on systems running vulnerable versions of binutils objdump. This can disrupt development, debugging, and reverse engineering workflows, especially in environments where objdump is used extensively for automated binary analysis or build processes. Excessive CPU and I/O usage can degrade system performance, potentially affecting other processes and services on the same host. While the vulnerability does not allow for code execution or data compromise, the inability to complete objdump analysis can delay incident response, vulnerability research, or software development activities. Organizations relying on automated toolchains that incorporate objdump may experience workflow interruptions. Since exploitation requires local access, the risk is higher in multi-user systems, shared development environments, or build servers where untrusted users can submit binaries for analysis. The absence of known exploits and patches reduces immediate risk but underscores the need for vigilance.

CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 13 Mar 2026, 19:31 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-400

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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