# CVE-2020-35493: Memory corruption in binutils

> An attacker can cause a denial of service in binutils objdump by providing a crafted PEF file that triggers a heap buffer overflow.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/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:** 4 Jan 2021
- **Updated:** 8 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2020-35493, GHSA-w5g7-j55x-m535

## What is CVE-2020-35493?

CVE-2020-35493 is a medium-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Fedoraproject Fedora, published on 4 Jan 2021. 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

A flaw exists in binutils in bfd/pef.c. An attacker who is able to submit a crafted PEF file to be parsed by objdump could cause a heap buffer overflow -> out-of-bounds read that could lead to an impact to application availability. This flaw affects binutils versions prior to 2.34.

Weakness: CWE-20 (Improper Input Validation)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-35493?

It affects 8 products.


Products: Broadcom Brocade Fabric Operating System Firmware, Fedoraproject Fedora, Gnu Binutils, Netapp Cloud Backup, Netapp Hci Compute Node Firmware, Netapp Ontap Select Deploy Administration Utility, Netapp Solidfire\, Enterprise Sds \& Hci Storage Node, Netapp Solidfire \& Hci Management Node.

## How do I fix CVE-2020-35493?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

## Is CVE-2020-35493 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-35493 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Fedoraproject Fedora

- [CVE-2023-27534](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-27534/): Path traversal in https://github.com/curl/curl (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2021-4197](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-4197/): Privilege escalation in kernel (high 7.8)
- [CVE-2023-27538](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-27538/): Auth bypass in https://github.com/curl/curl (high 7.7)
- [CVE-2021-27218](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-27218/): Integer overflow in n/a (high 7.5)
- [CVE-2021-27219](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-27219/): Integer overflow in n/a (high 7.5)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2020-35493 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2020-35493 is a medium-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Fedoraproject Fedora, published on 4 Jan 2021. 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-2020-35493 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Fedoraproject Fedora. 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-2020-35493/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-35493/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-35493
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-35493
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2020-35493

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-35493/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.