CVE-2023-25588
Description
A flaw was found in Binutils. The field the_bfd of asymbolstruct is uninitialized in the bfd_mach_o_get_synthetic_symtab function, which may lead to an application crash and local denial of service.
Statement
This issue is classified with a low severity primarily because binutils is not typically exposed to untrusted inputs in most environments, limiting the possibility of exploitation. Additionally, this out-of-bounds read is only triggered during the parsing of a specially crafted file, requiring an attacker to convince a user to process this file with objdump. Furthermore, binutils does not handle privileged operations, meaning that exploitation is unlikely to lead to system compromise or escalation of privileges. Also, the impact is limited to the application itself, without affecting the broader system or network security.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 4.7 | 5.5 | 4.7 |
| Attack Vector | Local | Local | Local |
| Attack Complexity | High | Low | High |
| Privileges Required | None | None | None |
| User Interaction | Required | Required | Required |
| Scope | Unchanged | Unchanged | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | None | None | None |
| Integrity Impact | None | None | None |
| Availability Impact | High | High | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Availability,Integrity,Other
Technical Impact: Other
Initial variables usually contain junk, which can not be trusted for consistency. This can lead to denial of service conditions, or modify control flow in unexpected ways. In some cases, an attacker can "pre-initialize" the variable using previous actions, which might enable code execution. This can cause a race condition if a lock variable check passes when it should not.
Authorization,Other
Technical Impact: Other
Strings that are not initialized are especially dangerous, since many functions expect a null at the end -- and only at the end -- of a string.
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