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.
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
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian:12 | biosig | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2025-54489 |
| Debian:13 | biosig | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2025-54489 |
| Debian:14 | biosig | 3.9.5-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2025-54489 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | biosig | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2025-54489 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | biosig | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2025-54489 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| 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