# CVE-2026-81880: radare2: Uncontrolled resource consumption in radare2 PEF loader

> An attacker can cause denial of service in radare2 by providing a crafted Apple PEF file that triggers excessive CPU consumption during loading.

- **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:** 22 Sep 2026
- **Updated:** 25 Sep 2026
- **Also known as:** GHSA-fg6f-rj8g-25pq, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-81880

## What is CVE-2026-81880?

CVE-2026-81880 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Radare Radare2, published on 22 Sep 2026. 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

radare2 is a UNIX-like reverse engineering framework and command-line toolset. Prior to 6.2.0, radare2's Apple Preferred Executable Format loader was vulnerable because the PEF loader accepted relocSecCount values that were not bounded by the number of sections or complete relocation records in the input. The vulnerability is triggered by normal binary-format auto-detection of a small crafted Apple PEF file. The loader could perform up to 268,435,456 relocation-section iterations and repeated buffer operations after record offsets passed the end of the file. This can cause denial of service through excessive CPU consumption and prolonged processing. This issue is fixed in version 6.2.0.

Weakness: CWE-834 (Excessive Iteration), CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-81880?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Radare Radare2.

## How do I fix CVE-2026-81880?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

## Is CVE-2026-81880 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-81880 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Radare Radare2

- [CVE-2025-1864](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-1864/): Buffer Overflow and Potential Code Execution in Radare2 (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2025-1744](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-1744/): Out-of-bounds Write in radare2 (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2021-32494](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-32494/): Denial of service in radare2 (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2021-32495](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-32495/): Use after free in radare2 (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2024-29646](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-29646/): Memory corruption in n/a (critical 9.8)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-81880 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-81880 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Radare Radare2, published on 22 Sep 2026. 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-2026-81880 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Radare Radare2. 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-2026-81880/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-81880/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-81880
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-81880
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-81880

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-81880/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.