CVE-2019-16941

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 5.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2019-09-28 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-91

Description

NSA Ghidra through 9.0.4, when experimental mode is enabled, allows arbitrary code execution if the Read XML Files feature of Bit Patterns Explorer is used with a modified XML document. This occurs in Features/BytePatterns/src/main/java/ghidra/bitpatterns/info/FileBitPatternInfoReader.java. An attack could start with an XML document that was originally created by DumpFunctionPatternInfoScript but then directly modified by an attacker (for example, to make a java.lang.Runtime.exec call).

Affected products

nationalsecurityagency ghidra: through 9.0.4

References

https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/blob/79d8f164f8bb8b15cfb60c5d4faeb8e1c25d15ca/Ghidra/Features/BytePatterns/src/main/java/ghidra/bitpatterns/info/FileBitPatternInfoReader.java#L187-L188
https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/commit/a17728f8c12effa171b17a25ccfb7e7d9528c5d0
https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/issues/1090
https://github.com/purpleracc00n/CVE-2019-16941
https://twitter.com/NSAGov/status/1178812792159248385
https://www.symantec.com/security-center/vulnerabilities/writeup/110223?om_rssid=sr-advisories
https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/blob/79d8f164f8bb8b15cfb60c5d4faeb8e1c25d15ca/Ghidra/Features/BytePatterns/src/main/java/ghidra/bitpatterns/info/FileBitPatternInfoReader.java#L187-L188
https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/commit/a17728f8c12effa171b17a25ccfb7e7d9528c5d0
https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/issues/1090
https://github.com/purpleracc00n/CVE-2019-16941
https://twitter.com/NSAGov/status/1178812792159248385
https://www.symantec.com/security-center/vulnerabilities/writeup/110223?om_rssid=sr-advisories

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