# CVE-2019-7148: Denial of service in n/a

> Remote attackers can cause denial of service via crafted ELF input triggering excessive memory allocation in libelf, though maintainers dispute severity.

- **Severity:** Medium 6.5 (`CVSS:3.0/AV:N/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:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** A user has to click or open something
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 29 Jan 2019
- **Updated:** 4 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** ALPINE-CVE-2019-7148, DEBIAN-CVE-2019-7148, GHSA-67vc-2q9c-6854, UBUNTU-CVE-2019-7148

## What is CVE-2019-7148?

CVE-2019-7148 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in n/a, published on 29 Jan 2019. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

### Official description

An attempted excessive memory allocation was discovered in the function read_long_names in elf_begin.c in libelf in elfutils 0.174. Remote attackers could leverage this vulnerability to cause a denial-of-service via crafted elf input, which leads to an out-of-memory exception. NOTE: The maintainers believe this is not a real issue, but instead a "warning caused by ASAN because the allocation is big. By setting ASAN_OPTIONS=allocator_may_return_null=1 and running the reproducer, nothing happens."

Weakness: CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2019-7148?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Elfutils Project Elfutils.

## How do I fix CVE-2019-7148?

No fix published yet.

## Is CVE-2019-7148 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2019-7148 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in n/a

- [CVE-2018-8769](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-8769/): Memory corruption in n/a (high 7.8)
- [CVE-2014-0172](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2014-0172/): Integer overflow in n/a (medium 6.8)
- [CVE-2014-9447](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2014-9447/): Path traversal in n/a (medium 6.4)
- [CVE-2020-21047](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-21047/): Memory corruption in n/a (medium 5.5)
- [CVE-2021-33294](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-33294/): Denial of service in n/a (medium 5.5)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2019-7148 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2019-7148 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in n/a, published on 29 Jan 2019. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2019-7148 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: n/a. 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-2019-7148/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-7148/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2019-7148
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-7148
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2019-7148

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-7148/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.