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VulnerabilityPublished Updated

CVE-2026-19548: Red Hat Hardened Images · Use After Free

Affects Red Hat Hardened ImagesSource CVE Database V5

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.5 Medium.

Data as of 10 Nov 2026, 23:24 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score
5.5Medium
How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

Thin evidence

One scorer or none
CVSS scores by source
CNA (redhat)CVSS 3.15.5
EPSS
0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 6% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Exploitation evidence

  1. Disclosed: evidence found.

    CVE published 12 Aug 2026

  2. Detectable: no evidence on record.

    No public nuclei template indexed

  3. Weaponized: no evidence on record.

    No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB

  4. Exploited in the wild: no evidence on record.

    Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation

  5. Observed by OffSeq 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 10 Nov 2026.

What to do

Affected software

ProductAffectedFixed in
Red Hat Hardened Imagesbinutils-mainAffected–Fixed in–
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10binutilsAffected–Fixed in–
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10gcc-toolset-15-binutilsAffected–Fixed in–
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10gcc-toolset-16-binutilsAffected–Fixed in–
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10mingw-binutilsAffected–Fixed in–
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6binutilsAffected–Fixed in–

AI-suggested

Red Hat's advisory does not indicate an official fix or patch is currently available. Build environments should avoid running LTO-enabled linking against untrusted or externally supplied object and archive files. The linker is a build-time tool not present in production runtimes, so exposure is primarily to CI/CD pipelines and developer workstations building from untrusted sources. Existing system hardening measures (ASLR, stack protector, FORTIFY_SOURCE, PIE) substantially reduce the likelihood of arbitrary code execution, limiting the realistic impact to denial of service via linker crash.

Description

Multiple Use-After-Free vulnerabilities were found in the add_archive_element function in ld/ldmain.c of the GNU linker (ld), a component of binutils. The root cause is that plugin_maybe_claim() in ld/plugin.c frees the original BFD object via bfd_close/_bfd_delete_bfd when entry->the_bfd->my_archive == NULL, but the caller retains both the original abfd parameter and a shallow copy (orig_input.the_bfd) as dangling pointers. These dangling pointers are subsequently dereferenced at three distinct locations in add_archive_element: 1. Line ~1442: accessing abfd->my_archive via bfd_usrdata(abfd->my_archive) 2. Line ~1493: multiple accesses to abfd and abfd->my_archive in a conditional check and bfd_get_filename call 3. Line ~1525: dereferencing the shallow copy orig_input.the_bfd->my_archive in trace/verbose logging The vulnerability is triggered when LTO plugins are active (link_info.lto_plugin_active is true) and the input object has abfd->my_archive == NULL, which is a valid state for standalone object files. Red Hat builds binutils with --enable-plugins and --enable-lto, confirming the vulnerable code path is compiled in and reachable. An attacker who can supply a crafted object or archive file to a build process using LTO-enabled linking could exploit this flaw to cause a denial of service (linker crash via segmentation fault). Arbitrary code execution is theoretically possible through heap manipulation but is substantially mitigated by hardening measures including stack protector, FORTIFY_SOURCE, ASLR, and PIE. The attack surface is limited to build-time environments — the linker is a development tool not exposed in production runtime. The most realistic exploitation scenario is a supply chain attack introducing a crafted object file as a build dependency in CI/CD pipelines or development environments.

References

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