CVE-2026-19548EPSS p2.3%
CVE-2026-19548CVE-2026-19548
Description
Multiple Use-After-Free vulnerabilities were found in the add_archive_element function in ld/ldmain.c of the GNU linker (ld), a component of binutils. The root cause is that plugin_maybe_claim() in ld/plugin.c frees the original BFD object via bfd_close/_bfd_delete_bfd when entry->the_bfd->my_archive == NULL, but the caller retains both the original abfd parameter and a shallow copy (orig_input.the_bfd) as dangling pointers. These dangling pointers are subsequently dereferenced at three distinct locations in add_archive_element:
1. Line ~1442: accessing abfd->my_archive via bfd_usrdata(abfd->my_archive)
2. Line ~1493: multiple accesses to abfd and abfd->my_archive in a conditional check and bfd_get_filename call
3. Line ~1525: dereferencing the shallow copy orig_input.the_bfd->my_archive in trace/verbose logging
The vulnerability is triggered when LTO plugins are active (link_info.lto_plugin_active is true) and the input object has abfd->my_archive == NULL, which is a valid state for
Scoring
| CVSS | 5.5 () |
| Vector | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
| EPSS | 0.12% probability of exploitation · percentile 2.3% · 2026-08-13T12:03:51Z |
| Last modified | 2026-08-12 |