CVE-2017-9746

high

Published 2017-06-19 · Modified 2026-05-13

💬 Discuss on Community ✚ Propose mitigation

CVSS v3

7.8

CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

8.8

Description

The disassemble_bytes function in objdump.c in GNU Binutils 2.28 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (buffer overflow and application crash) or possibly have unspecified other impact via a crafted binary file, as demonstrated by mishandling of rae insns printing for this file during "objdump -D" execution.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

75%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-42199 dos linux verified text · 5 KB

Alexandre Adamski · 2017-06-19

GNU binutils - 'disassemble_bytes' Heap Overflow

text exploit Source: Exploit-DB

Source: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=21580

I have been fuzzing objdump with American Fuzzy Lop and AddressSanitizer.

Please find attached the minimized file causing the issue ("Input") and the
ASAN report log ("Output"). Below is the reduced stacktrace with links to the
corresponding source lines on a GitHub mirror.

The command I used was `objdump -D <file>`.

Let me know if there is any additional information I can provide.

--

Input: 37a2b1374545eb23eed0eea880de6226.ad5cda09828cea9d238db2184e95406b.min
Output: 37a2b1374545eb23eed0eea880de6226.ad5cda09828cea9d238db2184e95406b.txt

Error in "disassemble_bytes": heap-buffer-overflow
  in disassemble_bytes at binutils/objdump.c:1993
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L1993)
  in disassemble_section at binutils/objdump.c:2309
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L2309)
  in bfd_map_over_sections at bfd/section.c:1395
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/bfd/section.c#L1395)
  in disassemble_data at binutils/objdump.c:2445
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L2445)
  in dump_bfd at binutils/objdump.c:3547
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L3547)
  in display_file at binutils/objdump.c:3714
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L3714)
  in main at binutils/objdump.c:4016
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L4016)

Input: 77125fccb44694b0db18006db1f0f4d3.64e76dd7ab33d15c8293caeca73c704a.min
Output: 77125fccb44694b0db18006db1f0f4d3.64e76dd7ab33d15c8293caeca73c704a.txt

Error in "disassemble_bytes": heap-buffer-overflow
  in disassemble_bytes at binutils/objdump.c:1932
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L1932)
  in disassemble_section at binutils/objdump.c:2309
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L2309)
  in bfd_map_over_sections at bfd/section.c:1395
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/bfd/section.c#L1395)
  in disassemble_data at binutils/objdump.c:2445
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L2445)
  in dump_bfd at binutils/objdump.c:3547
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L3547)
  in display_file at binutils/objdump.c:3714
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L3714)
  in main at binutils/objdump.c:4016
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L4016)

Input: c3269b8eae3f3ec0001d835e66795702.6e6557284eb14f91acf6c2576396517c.min
Output: c3269b8eae3f3ec0001d835e66795702.6e6557284eb14f91acf6c2576396517c.txt

Error in "disassemble_bytes": heap-buffer-overflow
  in disassemble_bytes at binutils/objdump.c:1926
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L1926)
  in disassemble_section at binutils/objdump.c:2309
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L2309)
  in bfd_map_over_sections at bfd/section.c:1395
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/bfd/section.c#L1395)
  in disassemble_data at binutils/objdump.c:2445
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L2445)
  in dump_bfd at binutils/objdump.c:3547
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L3547)
  in display_file at binutils/objdump.c:3714
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L3714)
  in main at binutils/objdump.c:4016
    (see https://github.com/bminor/binutils-gdb/blob/561bf3e950e410fbcac06523d43039f1f58150ca/binutils/objdump.c#L4016)


Additional Information:
The command used was `objdump -D <file>`. The compilation flags used were `-g -O2 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fsanitize=address -fno-sanitize-recover=undefined`. The configuration settings used were `--enable-targets=all --disable-shared`.


Proofs of Concept:
https://gitlab.com/exploit-database/exploitdb-bin-sploits/-/raw/main/bin-sploits/42199.zip

OS impact

SUSE Affected 1 release

Version	Status	Fixed in
—	Affected	—

Debian Fixed 5 releases

Version	Status	Fixed in
trixie	Fixed	`2.29-1`
sid	Fixed	`2.29-1`
forky	Fixed	`2.29-1`
bullseye	Fixed	`2.29-1`
bookworm	Fixed	`2.29-1`

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions	Fixed
gnu	binutils	`2.28`

References

CWEs

CWE-119

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.