Skip to content
Fencer Intel
medium 5.5

CVE-2017-7609 json

elf_compress.c in elfutils 0.168 does not validate the zlib compression factor, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service…

published 2017-04-09 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2017-16614

cvss
5.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.6%
EPSS 1.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 76%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

elf_compress.c in elfutils 0.168 does not validate the zlib compression factor, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via a crafted ELF file.

Patch / fix

  • elfutils Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 0.168-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-7609

  • elfutils Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 0.165-3ubuntu1.1
  • elfutils Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 0.170-0.4

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2017-7609

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • dwarves SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP3, SLE Micro 5.2, SLE Micro 5.1 +2 more 1.22-150300.7.3.1
  • elfutils SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP3, SLE Micro 5.2, SLE Micro 5.1 +2 more 0.177-150300.11.3.1
  • elfutils SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP1, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 0.168-4.5.3

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2022:2614-2SUSE-SU-2022:2614-1SUSE-SU-2019:1486-1

  • elfutils openSUSE Leap 15.1, openSUSE Leap 15.0 0.168-lp151.4.3.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2019:1590-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2017-7609 updated cvss 3.3

elfutils: Memory allocation failure in elf_compress.c

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 elfutils Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 elfutils, elfutils-libs, elfutils-libelf Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 elfutils, elfutils-libs, elfutils-libelf, elfutils-default-yama-scope
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

1.64% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 76% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • blogs.gentoo.org https://blogs.gentoo.org/ago/2017/04/03/elfutils-memory-allocation-failure-in-__libelf_decompress-elf_compress-c referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 5.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.