The infocmp command-line tool in ncurses before 6.5-20251213 has a stack-based buffer overflow in analyze_string in progs/infocmp.c.
Weakness
A stack-based buffer overflow condition is a condition where the buffer being overwritten is allocated on the stack (i.e., is a local variable or, rarely, a parameter to a function).
Affected Software
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | * | 6.4 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240427 (including) | 6.5-20240427 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240504 (including) | 6.5-20240504 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240511 (including) | 6.5-20240511 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240518 (including) | 6.5-20240518 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240519 (including) | 6.5-20240519 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240525 (including) | 6.5-20240525 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240601 (including) | 6.5-20240601 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240608 (including) | 6.5-20240608 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240615 (including) | 6.5-20240615 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240622 (including) | 6.5-20240622 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240629 (including) | 6.5-20240629 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240706 (including) | 6.5-20240706 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240713 (including) | 6.5-20240713 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240720 (including) | 6.5-20240720 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240727 (including) | 6.5-20240727 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240810 (including) | 6.5-20240810 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240817 (including) | 6.5-20240817 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240824 (including) | 6.5-20240824 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240831 (including) | 6.5-20240831 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240914 (including) | 6.5-20240914 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240922 (including) | 6.5-20240922 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20240928 (including) | 6.5-20240928 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20241006 (including) | 6.5-20241006 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20241019 (including) | 6.5-20241019 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20241026 (including) | 6.5-20241026 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20241102 (including) | 6.5-20241102 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20241109 (including) | 6.5-20241109 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20241123 (including) | 6.5-20241123 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20241130 (including) | 6.5-20241130 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20241207 (including) | 6.5-20241207 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20241214 (including) | 6.5-20241214 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20241221 (including) | 6.5-20241221 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20241228 (including) | 6.5-20241228 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250104 (including) | 6.5-20250104 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250111 (including) | 6.5-20250111 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250118 (including) | 6.5-20250118 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250125 (including) | 6.5-20250125 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250201 (including) | 6.5-20250201 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250208 (including) | 6.5-20250208 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250215 (including) | 6.5-20250215 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250216 (including) | 6.5-20250216 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250222 (including) | 6.5-20250222 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250301 (including) | 6.5-20250301 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250308 (including) | 6.5-20250308 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250315 (including) | 6.5-20250315 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250322 (including) | 6.5-20250322 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250329 (including) | 6.5-20250329 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250405 (including) | 6.5-20250405 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250412 (including) | 6.5-20250412 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250419 (including) | 6.5-20250419 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250426 (including) | 6.5-20250426 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250503 (including) | 6.5-20250503 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250510 (including) | 6.5-20250510 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250517 (including) | 6.5-20250517 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250524 (including) | 6.5-20250524 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250531 (including) | 6.5-20250531 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250614 (including) | 6.5-20250614 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250621 (including) | 6.5-20250621 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250628 (including) | 6.5-20250628 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250705 (including) | 6.5-20250705 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250712 (including) | 6.5-20250712 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250720 (including) | 6.5-20250720 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250726 (including) | 6.5-20250726 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250802 (including) | 6.5-20250802 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250809 (including) | 6.5-20250809 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250816 (including) | 6.5-20250816 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250823 (including) | 6.5-20250823 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250830 (including) | 6.5-20250830 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250913 (including) | 6.5-20250913 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250920 (including) | 6.5-20250920 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20250927 (including) | 6.5-20250927 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20251004 (including) | 6.5-20251004 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20251010 (including) | 6.5-20251010 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20251018 (including) | 6.5-20251018 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20251025 (including) | 6.5-20251025 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20251101 (including) | 6.5-20251101 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20251115 (including) | 6.5-20251115 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20251122 (including) | 6.5-20251122 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20251123 (including) | 6.5-20251123 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20251129 (including) | 6.5-20251129 (including) |
| Ncurses | Invisible-island | 6.5-20251206 (including) | 6.5-20251206 (including) |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | RedHat | ncurses-0:6.4-15.20240127.el10_1 | * |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 Extended Update Support | RedHat | ncurses-0:6.4-14.20240127.el10_0.1 | * |
| Red Hat Hardened Images | RedHat | ncurses-main-6.6-1.1.hum1 | * |
| Ncurses | Ubuntu | esm-infra/xenial | * |
| Ncurses | Ubuntu | upstream | * |
Potential Mitigations
- Use automatic buffer overflow detection mechanisms that are offered by certain compilers or compiler extensions. Examples include: the Microsoft Visual Studio /GS flag, Fedora/Red Hat FORTIFY_SOURCE GCC flag, StackGuard, and ProPolice, which provide various mechanisms including canary-based detection and range/index checking.
- D3-SFCV (Stack Frame Canary Validation) from D3FEND [REF-1334] discusses canary-based detection in detail.
- Run or compile the software using features or extensions that randomly arrange the positions of a program’s executable and libraries in memory. Because this makes the addresses unpredictable, it can prevent an attacker from reliably jumping to exploitable code.
- Examples include Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) [REF-58] [REF-60] and Position-Independent Executables (PIE) [REF-64]. Imported modules may be similarly realigned if their default memory addresses conflict with other modules, in a process known as “rebasing” (for Windows) and “prelinking” (for Linux) [REF-1332] using randomly generated addresses. ASLR for libraries cannot be used in conjunction with prelink since it would require relocating the libraries at run-time, defeating the whole purpose of prelinking.
- For more information on these techniques see D3-SAOR (Segment Address Offset Randomization) from D3FEND [REF-1335].
References
- https://github.com/Cao-Wuhui/CVE-2025-69720
- https://invisible-island.net/archives/ncurses/6.5/
- https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/
- https://marc.info/?l=ncurses-bug\u0026m=176539968328570\u0026w=2
- https://marc.info/?l=ncurses-bug\u0026m=176540731801330\u0026w=2
- https://marc.info/?l=ncurses-bug\u0026m=176545557728083\u0026w=2
- https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-253495.html