CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-19724

Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

Published: Aug 22, 2023 | Modified: Nov 07, 2023
CVSS 3.x
5.5
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
5.5 LOW
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Ubuntu
MEDIUM

A memory consumption issue in get_data function in binutils/nm.c in GNU nm before 2.34 allows attackers to cause a denial of service via crafted command.

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, which slowly consumes remaining memory.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Binutils Gnu * 2.34 (excluding)
Binutils Ubuntu bionic *
Binutils Ubuntu esm-infra/bionic *
Binutils Ubuntu esm-infra/xenial *
Binutils Ubuntu trusty *
Binutils Ubuntu trusty/esm *
Binutils Ubuntu upstream *
Binutils Ubuntu xenial *

Potential Mitigations

  • Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
  • For example, glibc in Linux provides protection against free of invalid pointers.
  • When using Xcode to target OS X or iOS, enable automatic reference counting (ARC) [REF-391].
  • To help correctly and consistently manage memory when programming in C++, consider using a smart pointer class such as std::auto_ptr (defined by ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 14882:2003), std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr (specified by an upcoming revision of the C++ standard, informally referred to as C++ 1x), or equivalent solutions such as Boost.

References