# CVE-2017-7299: Denial of service in n/a

> An attacker can cause a denial of service in the GNU linker by providing a malformed ELF file that triggers an invalid read during relocation processing.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** A user has to click or open something
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 29 Mar 2017
- **Updated:** 5 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2017-7299, GHSA-rmj7-45wg-98hw, UBUNTU-CVE-2017-7299

## What is CVE-2017-7299?

CVE-2017-7299 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Gnu Binutils, published on 29 Mar 2017. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

### Official description

The Binary File Descriptor (BFD) library (aka libbfd), as distributed in GNU Binutils 2.28, has an invalid read (of size 8) because the code to emit relocs (bfd_elf_final_link function in bfd/elflink.c) does not check the format of the input file before trying to read the ELF reloc section header. The vulnerability leads to a GNU linker (ld) program crash.

Weakness: CWE-125 (Out-of-bounds Read)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2017-7299?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Gnu Binutils.

## How do I fix CVE-2017-7299?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

## Is CVE-2017-7299 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-7299 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Gnu Binutils

- [CVE-2017-7614](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-7614/): Null dereference in n/a (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2014-9939](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2014-9939/): Memory corruption in n/a (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2017-7226](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-7226/): Information disclosure in n/a (critical 9.1)
- [CVE-2017-6969](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-6969/): Information disclosure in n/a (critical 9.1)
- [CVE-2020-19726](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-19726/): Denial of service in n/a (high 8.8)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2017-7299 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2017-7299 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Gnu Binutils, published on 29 Mar 2017. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-7299 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Gnu Binutils. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-7299/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-7299/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2017-7299
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-7299
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2017-7299

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-7299/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.