CVE-2018-18606 Null dereference in n/a

What is CVE-2018-18606?

CVE-2018-18606 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 23 Oct 2018. 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

An issue was discovered in the merge_strings function in merge.c in the Binary File Descriptor (BFD) library (aka libbfd), as distributed in GNU Binutils 2.31. There is a NULL pointer dereference in _bfd_add_merge_section when attempting to merge sections with large alignments. A specially crafted ELF allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service, as demonstrated by ld.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-18606?

It affects 3 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Gnu Binutils, Netapp Data Ontap.

How do I fix CVE-2018-18606?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Is CVE-2018-18606 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-18606 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

• CVE-2015-3306 ProFTPD Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2018-18606, GHSA-fjh3-52qv-365r, UBUNTU-CVE-2018-18606.