CVE-2025-5702

The strcmp implementation optimized for the Power10 processor in the GNU C Library version 2.39 and later writes to vector registers v20 to v31 without saving contents from the caller (those registers are defined as non-volatile registers by the powerpc64le ABI), resulting in overwriting of its contents and potentially altering control flow of the caller, or leaking the input strings to the function to other parts of the program.

Weakness

The product does not initialize or incorrectly initializes a resource, which might leave the resource in an unexpected state when it is accessed or used.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
• For example, in Java, if the programmer does not explicitly initialize a variable, then the code could produce a compile-time error (if the variable is local) or automatically initialize the variable to the default value for the variable’s type. In Perl, if explicit initialization is not performed, then a default value of undef is assigned, which is interpreted as 0, false, or an equivalent value depending on the context in which the variable is accessed.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/26.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/29.html

References

• https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=33056