Vulnerability · Published Aug 25, 2025 · Assigned by talos

CVE-2025-54489

Critical 9.8

In plain English

A critical-severity stack buffer overflow in libbiosig from The Biosig Project. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.7% (higher than 54% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS 3.1)9.8Critical
Exploit odds (30 days)0.7%top 46.4% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

A stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the MFER parsing functionality of The Biosig Project libbiosig 3.9.0 and Master Branch (35a819fa). A specially crafted MFER file can lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can provide a malicious file to trigger this vulnerability.This vulnerability manifests on line 8970 of biosig.c on the current master branch (35a819fa), when the Tag is 63: else if (tag==63) { uint8_t tag2=255, len2=255; count = 0; while ((count<len) && !(FlagInfiniteLength && len2==0 && tag2==0)){ curPos += ifread(&tag2,1,1,hdr); curPos += ifread(&len2,1,1,hdr); if (VERBOSE_LEVEL==9) fprintf(stdout,"MFER: tag=%3i chan=%2i len=%-4i tag2=%3i len2=%3i curPos=%i %li count=%4i\n",tag,chan,len,tag2,len2,curPos,iftell(hdr),(int)count); if (FlagInfiniteLength && len2==0 && tag2==0) break; count += (2+len2); curPos += ifread(&buf,1,len2,hdr); Here, the number of bytes read is not the Data Length decoded from the current frame in the file (`len`) but rather is a new length contained in a single octet read from the same input file (`len2`). Despite this, a stack-based buffer overflow condition can still occur, as the destination buffer is still `buf`, which has a size of only 128 bytes, while `len2` can be as large as 255.

Affected packages & fixed versions

EcosystemPackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian:12biosigno fix listedDEBIAN-CVE-2025-54489
Debian:13biosigno fix listedDEBIAN-CVE-2025-54489
Debian:14biosig3.9.5-1DEBIAN-CVE-2025-54489
Ubuntu:25.10biosigno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-54489
Ubuntu:26.10biosigno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-54489

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
The Biosig Project libbiosig 3.9.0Master Branch (35a819fa)

Weakness: CWE-121 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

References