An issue was discovered in the merge_strings function in merge.c in the Binary File Descriptor (BFD) library (aka libbfd), as distributed in GNU Binutils 2.31. There is a NULL pointer dereference in _bfd_add_merge_section when attempting to merge sections with large alignments. A specially crafted ELF allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service, as demonstrated by ld.
A NULL pointer dereference occurs when the application dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid, but is NULL, typically causing a crash or exit.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Binutils | Gnu | 2.31 (including) | 2.31 (including) |
| Binutils | Ubuntu | bionic | * |
| Binutils | Ubuntu | cosmic | * |
| Binutils | Ubuntu | esm-infra-legacy/trusty | * |
| Binutils | Ubuntu | esm-infra/xenial | * |
| Binutils | Ubuntu | precise/esm | * |
| Binutils | Ubuntu | trusty | * |
| Binutils | Ubuntu | trusty/esm | * |
| Binutils | Ubuntu | xenial | * |