CVE-2017-9778 — GNU Debugger (GDB) 8

GNU Debugger (GDB) 8.0 and earlier fails to detect a negative length field in a DWARF section. A malformed section in an ELF binary or a core file can cause GDB to repeatedly allocate memory until a process limit is reached. This can, for example, impede efforts to analyze malwar

01What is this vulnerability?

GNU Debugger (GDB) 8.0 and earlier fails to detect a negative length field in a DWARF section. A malformed section in an ELF binary or a core file can cause GDB to repeatedly allocate memory until a process limit is reached. This can, for example, impede efforts to analyze malware with GDB.

02Affected products

No structured affected-product list available — see references below for vendor advisories.

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2017-06-21T07:29:00.367
• Last modified: 2026-05-13T00:24:29.033

09References

• www.securityfocus.com — http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/99244
• sourceware.org — https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=21600
• www.securityfocus.com — http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/99244
• sourceware.org — https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=21600