Vulnerability · Published Apr 22, 2026 · Assigned by redhat
CVE-2026-6844Binutils: binutils: denial of service vulnerabilities in readelf via crafted elf files
Medium 5.5
In plain English
A medium-severity uncontrolled resource consumption in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 from Red Hat. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.1% (higher than 1% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
A flaw was found in the `readelf` utility of the binutils package. A local attacker could exploit two Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerabilities by providing a specially crafted Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) file. One vulnerability, a resource exhaustion (CWE-400), can lead to an out-of-memory condition. The other, a null pointer dereference (CWE-476), can cause a segmentation fault. Both issues can result in the `readelf` utility becoming unresponsive or crashing, leading to a denial of service.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian:12 | binutils | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-6844 |
| Debian:13 | binutils | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-6844 |
| Debian:14 | binutils | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-6844 |
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | binutils | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-6844 |
| Ubuntu:24.04:LTS | binutils | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-6844 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | binutils | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-6844 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | binutils | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-6844 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | binutils | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-6844 |
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-400 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
References
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-6844 vdb-entry, x_refsource_REDHAT
- RHBZ#2460016 issue-tracking, x_refsource_REDHAT