CVE-2023-1972 — A potential heap based buffer overflow was found in _bfd_elf_slurp_version_table

A potential heap based buffer overflow was found in _bfd_elf_slurp_version_tables() in bfd/elf.c. This may lead to loss of availability.

01What is this vulnerability?

A potential heap based buffer overflow was found in _bfd_elf_slurp_version_tables() in bfd/elf.c. This may lead to loss of availability.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / binutils	affected at least binutils 2.40

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: 2023-05-17T00:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2025-01-22T19:45:13.172Z

09References

• bugzilla.redhat.com — https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2185646
• sourceware.org — https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=30285
• security.gentoo.org — https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202309-15