What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2012-3509

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.0 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 3.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2012-09-05 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-189

Description

Multiple integer overflows in the (1) _objalloc_alloc function in objalloc.c and (2) objalloc_alloc macro in include/objalloc.h in GNU libiberty, as used by binutils 2.22, allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via vectors related to the "addition of CHUNK_HEADER_SIZE to the length," which triggers a heap-based buffer overflow.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 10.04, 12.04, 14.04, 14.10
• Debian Linux: 7.0
• GNU Binutils: from 2.22 before 2.24 — fixed in 2.24
• GNU Libiberty: all versions

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: GNU Binutils 2.24. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=54411
• http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2012-08/msg01986.html
• http://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2012-3509
• http://www.mandriva.com/security/advisories?name=MDVSA-2015:029
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/08/29/3
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/55281
• http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2496-1
• https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/78135
• http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=54411
• http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2012-08/msg01986.html
• http://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2012-3509
• http://www.mandriva.com/security/advisories?name=MDVSA-2015:029

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