CVE-2017-9778 Denial of service in n/a

Medium 5.5 Published 21 Jun 2017 Updated 5 Aug 2024

A malformed DWARF section in an ELF binary or core file causes GDB to exhaust memory, leading to a denial of service during analysis.

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

What is CVE-2017-9778?

CVE-2017-9778 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in n/a, published on 21 Jun 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

GNU Debugger (GDB) 8.0 and earlier fails to detect a negative length field in a DWARF section. A malformed section in an ELF binary or a core file can cause GDB to repeatedly allocate memory until a process limit is reached. This can, for example, impede efforts to analyze malware with GDB.

Weakness: CWE-770, CWE-20

Which versions are affected by CVE-2017-9778?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Gnu Gdb.

How do I fix CVE-2017-9778?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2017-9778 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-9778 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2017-9778, GHSA-hmmq-v5m7-8j9w, UBUNTU-CVE-2017-9778.