VulnerabilityPublished 6 Mar 2026Updated 9 Mar 2026

CVE-2025-69652: GNU Binutils thru · Improper Cleanup on Thrown Exception

Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.2 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 13:47 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

6.2Medium

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

EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 7% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

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

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
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: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
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

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2025-69652, organizations should: 1) Avoid processing untrusted or unauthenticated ELF binaries with vulnerable versions of readelf; 2) Implement strict validation and sandboxing of ELF files before analysis to prevent malformed inputs from reaching readelf; 3) Monitor for and apply official patches or updates from GNU Binutils maintainers as soon as they become available; 4) Consider using alternative tools or updated versions of readelf that have addressed this vulnerability; 5) Integrate input sanitization and integrity checks in automated pipelines that handle ELF files to detect malformed debug information early; 6) Employ runtime protections such as process isolation or containerization when running readelf to limit the impact of potential crashes; 7) Maintain up-to-date inventories of tooling versions to quickly identify vulnerable deployments; 8) Educate developers and analysts about the risks of processing untrusted ELF files and encourage cautious handling; 9) If possible, implement monitoring to detect abnormal termination of readelf processes to enable rapid response; 10) For critical environments, consider disabling debug info processing if feasible or using custom parsing logic that is resilient to malformed DWARF data.

Description

GNU Binutils thru 2.46 readelf contains a vulnerability that leads to an abort (SIGABRT) when processing a crafted ELF binary with malformed DWARF abbrev or debug information. Due to incomplete state cleanup in process_debug_info(), an invalid debug_info_p state may propagate into DWARF attribute parsing routines. When certain malformed attributes result in an unexpected data length of zero, byte_get_little_endian() triggers a fatal abort. No evidence of memory corruption or code execution was observed; the impact is limited to denial of service.

Impact

The primary impact of CVE-2025-69652 is denial of service against systems or users relying on GNU Binutils readelf for ELF binary inspection or debugging. This can disrupt development, debugging, or automated analysis pipelines that process ELF files, especially in environments where untrusted or potentially malicious ELF files are analyzed. While the vulnerability does not allow code execution or data compromise, the denial of service could be leveraged to interrupt build systems, continuous integration workflows, or forensic investigations. Organizations with automated ELF processing tools or security scanners that invoke readelf may experience service interruptions or require manual intervention. The impact is localized to the availability of the readelf utility and does not extend to broader system compromise. Since exploitation requires local access or the ability to supply crafted ELF files for processing, remote exploitation is unlikely without additional vulnerabilities. However, in environments where ELF files are received from untrusted sources, such as software supply chains or shared development environments, the risk of denial of service is heightened.

CWE-460Improper Cleanup on Thrown Exception (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: MediumOWASP Top 10 A10:2025: Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions (opens in a new tab)
The product does not clean up its state or incorrectly cleans up its state when an exception is thrown, leading to unexpected state or control flow.
Implementation
If one breaks from a loop or function by throwing an exception, make sure that cleanup happens or that you should exit the program. Use throwing exceptions sparsely.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Logging (opens in a new tab)
Error Handling (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 13 Mar 2026, 19:42 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-460

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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