CVE-2018-18520

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2018-10-19 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-119

Description

An Invalid Memory Address Dereference exists in the function elf_end in libelf in elfutils through v0.174. Although eu-size is intended to support ar files inside ar files, handle_ar in size.c closes the outer ar file before handling all inner entries. The vulnerability allows attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) with a crafted ELF file.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 16.04, 18.04, 18.10
Debian Linux: 8.0, 9.0
GNU elfutils: through 0.174
openSUSE Leap: 15.0, 15.1
RedHat Enterprise Linux Desktop: 7.0
RedHat Enterprise Linux Server: 7.0
RedHat Enterprise Linux Workstation: 7.0

References

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-06/msg00052.html
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2019:2197
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2019/02/msg00036.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/10/msg00030.html
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23787
https://sourceware.org/ml/elfutils-devel/2018-q4/msg00057.html
https://usn.ubuntu.com/4012-1/
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-06/msg00052.html
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2019:2197
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2019/02/msg00036.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/10/msg00030.html
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23787

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