See how gnu compares to other vendors in security performance
A flaw was found in GNU Coreutils. The sort utility's begfield() function is vulnerable to a heap buffer under-read. The program may access memory outside the allocated buffer if a user runs a crafted command using the traditional key format. A malicious input could lead to a crash or leak sensitive data.
A flaw was found in GNU tar. The --one-top-level option is intended to confine extraction under a designated directory, but hardlink targets from the archive are not confined the same way and are resolved relative to the extraction working directory (or the directory given with -C). A crafted archive can create hardlinks inside the --one-top-level directory that point to files outside it. If a suitable symbolic link already exists under the extraction working directory, hardlinking to that symlink can bypass tar's usual symlink-based path protections and allow writing outside the intended top-level directory during a single extraction. Users who rely on --one-top-level as a security boundary when extracting untrusted archives may be affected.
tar.Reader does not set a maximum size on the number of sparse region data blocks in GNU tar pax 1.0 sparse files. A maliciously-crafted archive containing a large number of sparse regions can cause a Reader to read an unbounded amount of data from the archive into memory. When reading from a compressed source, a small compressed input can result in large allocations.
This is a vulnerability report sent to us through https://issues.redhat.com/browse/PSIRTSUPT-17918 and was created using the PoC auto-triage agents. It contains hints on the vulnerability extracted by the IA and the full report. ALWAYS review it before any action. Once working on this, don't forget to also update the JSM ticket.
Multiple Use-After-Free vulnerabilities were found in the addarchiveelement function in ld/ldmain.c of the GNU linker (ld), a component of binutils. The root cause is that pluginmaybeclaim() in ld/plugin.c frees the original BFD object via bfdclose/bfddeletebfd when entry->thebfd->myarchive == NULL, but the caller retains both the original abfd parameter and a shallow copy (originput.thebfd) as dangling pointers. These dangling pointers are subsequently dereferenced at three distinct locations in addarchiveelement:
1. Line ~1442: accessing abfd->myarchive via bfdusrdata(abfd->myarchive) 2. Line ~1493: multiple accesses to abfd and abfd->myarchive in a conditional check and bfdgetfilename call 3. Line ~1525: dereferencing the shallow copy originput.thebfd->myarchive in trace/verbose logging
The vulnerability is triggered when LTO plugins are active (linkinfo.ltopluginactive is true) and the input object has abfd->myarchive == 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, FORTIFYSOURCE, 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.
A TOCTOU (Time-of-Check Time-of-Use) vulnerability in GNU tar's incremental dumpdir 'X' rename handling allows a local attacker with write access to a directory being backed up to influence the restore process if the attacker has access to the system where the restore is being performed. During restoration, files or directories may be created, renamed or overwritten outside the intended extraction directory. This could lead to unauthorized file modification or, in some cases, privilege escalation. Exploitation does not require the attacker to modify or craft the archive, and standard backup and restore workflows—including extracting into a newly created directory without using the -P option do not mitigate the issue.
A stack overflow flaw was found when reading a BFS file system. A crafted BFS filesystem may lead to an uncontrolled loop, causing grub2 to crash.
A flaw was found in grub2. When reading data from a jfs filesystem, grub's jfs filesystem module uses user-controlled parameters from the filesystem geometry to determine the internal buffer size, however, it improperly checks for integer overflows. A maliciouly crafted filesystem may lead some of those buffer size calculations to overflow, causing it to perform a grubmalloc() operation with a smaller size than expected. As a result, the grubjfslookupsymlink() function will write past the internal buffer length during grubjfsreadfile(). This issue can be leveraged to corrupt grub's internal critical data and may result in arbitrary code execution, by-passing secure boot protections.
GNU patch is vulnerable to a NULL pointer dereference when processing a specially crafted unified-diff patch file. Improper handling of consecutive end-of-file newline markers can corrupt internal hunk (single block of changes in diff) data structures, causing the application to pass a NULL pointer to fwrite() during patch processing. An attacker can trigger this condition with a malicious patch file, causing the utility to crash and resulting in a denial of service.
This issue has been fixed in the commit e6d6a4e021660679d7fc9150f981d4920f722313
A flaw was found in grub2. When performing a symlink lookup from a reiserfs filesystem, grub's reiserfs fs module uses user-controlled parameters from the filesystem geometry to determine the internal buffer size, however, it improperly checks for integer overflows. A maliciouly crafted filesystem may lead some of those buffer size calculations to overflow, causing it to perform a grubmalloc() operation with a smaller size than expected. As a result, the grubreiserfsreadsymlink() will call grubreiserfsreadreal() with a overflown length parameter, leading to a heap based out-of-bounds write during data reading. This flaw may be leveraged to corrupt grub's internal critical data and can result in arbitrary code execution, by-passing secure boot protections.
GNU patch is vulnerable to a denial of service (DoS) due to improper validation of hunk (single block of changes in diff) line offsets in unified-diff input. A specially crafted patch can specify an extremely large line number, causing the application to enter an effectively infinite processing loop while attempting to locate the requested position. This results in excessive CPU consumption and prevents the process from completing. An attacker can trigger this behavior by supplying a malicious patch file, causing the utility to become unresponsive and require manual termination.
This issue has been fixed in the commit faba04ef4f2b410257f76c1b9dc85e350929c4b9
A flaw was found in grub2. When performing a symlink lookup from a romfs filesystem, grub's romfs filesystem module uses user-controlled parameters from the filesystem geometry to determine the internal buffer size, however, it improperly checks for integer overflows. A maliciously crafted filesystem may lead some of those buffer size calculations to overflow, causing it to perform a grubmalloc() operation with a smaller size than expected. As a result, the grubromfsreadsymlink() may cause out-of-bounds writes when the calling grubdiskread() function. This issue may be leveraged to corrupt grub's internal critical data and can result in arbitrary code execution by-passing secure boot protections.
An integer overflow flaw was found in the BFS file system driver in grub2. When reading a file with an indirect extent map, grub2 fails to validate the number of extent entries to be read. A crafted or corrupted BFS filesystem may cause an integer overflow during the file reading, leading to a heap of bounds read. As a consequence, sensitive data may be leaked, or grub2 will crash.
A flaw was found in grub2. When reading tar files, grub2 allocates an internal buffer for the file name. However, it fails to properly verify the allocation against possible integer overflows. It's possible to cause the allocation length to overflow with a crafted tar file, leading to a heap out-of-bounds write. This flaw eventually allows an attacker to circumvent secure boot protections.
A vulnerability, which was classified as problematic, was found in GNU Binutils up to 2.43. This affects the function disassemblebytes of the file binutils/objdump.c. The manipulation of the argument buf leads to stack-based buffer overflow. It is possible to initiate the attack remotely. 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. Upgrading to version 2.44 is able to address this issue. The identifier of the patch is baac6c221e9d69335bf41366a1c7d87d8ab2f893. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component.
A vulnerability was found in GNU Binutils 2.43. It has been declared as problematic. Affected by this vulnerability is the function bfdputl64 of the file libbfd.c of the component ld. The manipulation leads to memory corruption. The attack can be launched remotely. The complexity of an attack is rather high. The exploitation appears to be difficult. The exploit has been disclosed to the public and may be used. The identifier of the patch is 75086e9de1707281172cc77f178e7949a4414ed0. It is recommended to apply a patch to fix this issue.
Grub2: read: integer overflow may lead to out-of-bounds write
A vulnerability classified as critical has been found in GNU Binutils up to 2.44. This affects the function debugtypesamep of the file /binutils/debug.c of the component objdump. The manipulation leads to memory corruption. Local access is required to approach this attack. The exploit has been disclosed to the public and may be used. It is recommended to apply a patch to fix this issue.
A vulnerability was found in GNU Binutils up to 2.44. It has been rated as critical. Affected by this issue is the function elfgcsweep of the file bfd/elflink.c of the component ld. The manipulation leads to memory corruption. An attack has to be approached locally. The exploit has been disclosed to the public and may be used. Upgrading to version 2.45 is able to address this issue. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component.
In GNU tar before 1.35 mishandled extension attributes in a PAX archive can lead to an application crash in xheader.c.
After a failed cache insertion, addgetnetgrentX tries to send the non-existing response after the not-found header.
In addinnetgrX, addgetnetgrentX may have produced a NULL result, indicating a not-found status, but this is not handled in the subsequent code that prepares the record that will be sent out to the client.
Reference: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/showbug.cgi?id=31678
After a failed cache insertion, addgetnetgrentX tries to send the non-existing response after the not-found header.
In addinnetgrX, addgetnetgrentX may have produced a NULL result, indicating a not-found status, but this is not handled in the subsequent code that prepares the record that will be sent out to the client.
Reference: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/showbug.cgi?id=31678
GNU Emacs for Android is vulnerable to an integer overflow in the sfntreadcmapformat12() function in src/sfnt.c. When processing a crafted TrueType font file, an unguarded addition in the xmalloc allocation call wraps around on 32-bit builds, causing a heap buffer overflow write. An attacker can deliver a malicious font file via email, EWW (Emacs Web Wowser), or documents with custom faces, causing Emacs to load it. This results in heap memory corruption that can lead to code execution.
This issue was fixed in commit c4e20777c26548722a37b03db93243e83a0d6188
GNU Emacs for Android contains an off-by-one error in the gvar table parser in src/sfnt.c. The shared-coordinate index boundary check in sfntvarysimpleglyph() and sfntvarycompoundglyph() uses a strict greater-than comparison instead of greater-than-or-equal, allowing a crafted TrueType variable font to bypass the check and trigger a heap-based out-of-bounds read via memcpy. An attacker can deliver a malicious font file via email, EWW (Emacs Web Wowser), or documents with custom faces, causing Emacs to load it. This exposes heap memory contents which can be later used to defeat ASLR.
This issue was fixed in commit 95ab9ef627b212d74d321c5bbb5b56a1be7b9fbe
GNU cpio is vulnerable to an uncontrolled memory allocation in the makepath function at src/makepath.c. The function uses alloca to allocate stack memory based on the length of argpath, which is derived from an archive-controlled pathname during extraction. A malicious cpio archive containing a sufficiently long nested pathname causes an unbounded stack allocation, resulting in a stack overflow and crash of the cpio process. An attacker who can supply a crafted cpio archive to a victim who extracts it can cause a denial of service.
This issue has been fixed in commit 3cd514031371d8aeeaf2048aa10103e02831aaa9
GNU cpio contains a Path Traversal vulnerability in its tar archive extraction functionality. When extracting a tar archive in copy-in mode with the --no-absolute-filenames option, the extracted file name is normalized but the tar hard-link target is passed to the linktoname function without equivalent sanitization before calling link function. A tar archive provided by an attacker, containing a hard-link entry whose linkname is set to an absolute path outside the extraction directory, can cause cpio to create a hard link to an existing file outside the intended extraction directory, breaking the expected guarantee of --no-absolute-filenames and allowing archive-controlled linkage to external files.
This issue has been fixed in commit e2b9cbdd3354d2b1569b7390d1bc15c1930559ad
GNU cpio is vulnerable to improper encoding or escaping of output in its archive member listing functionality. When listing archive members via cpio -it, member names are printed directly to output without quoting or escaping. An attacker can craft a cpio archive containing member names with embedded newline characters or ANSI escape sequences, causing forged listing entries or terminal control sequence injection when the listing is displayed.
This issue has been fixed in commit 2ff9600c9ef32e88759843cdbde74c8db5ae9b30
A flaw was found in the GNU Binutils BFD library, a widely used component for handling binary files such as object files and executables. The issue occurs when processing specially crafted XCOFF object files, where a relocation type value is not properly validated before being used. This can cause the program to read memory outside of intended bounds. As a result, affected tools may crash or expose unintended memory contents, leading to denial-of-service or limited information disclosure risks.
Binutils objdump contains a denial-of-service vulnerability when processing a crafted binary with malformed DWARF debug information. A logic error in the handling of DWARF compilation units can result in an invalid offsetsize value being used inside bytegetlittleendian, leading to an abort (SIGABRT). The issue was observed in binutils 2.44. A local attacker can trigger the crash by supplying a malicious input file.
Binutils objdump contains a denial-of-service vulnerability when processing a crafted binary with malformed DWARF debugrnglists data. A logic error in the handling of the debugrnglists 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.
Calling gethostbyaddr or gethostbyaddrr with a configured nsswitch.conf that specifies the library's DNS backend in the GNU C library version 2.34 to version 2.43 could result in an invalid DNS hostname being returned to the caller in violation of the DNS specification.