What is CVE-2019-12972?

CVE-2019-12972 is a medium-severity vulnerability in GNU Binutils, classified under Out-of-bounds Read. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2019-06-26.

How severe is CVE-2019-12972?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.

Is CVE-2019-12972 known to be exploited?

3 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Out-of-bounds Read in GNU Binutils

CVE-2019-12972

An issue was discovered in the Binary File Descriptor (BFD) library (aka libbfd), as distributed in GNU Binutils 2.32. There is a heap-based buffer over-read in _bfd_doprnt in bfd.c because elf_object_p in elfcode.h mishandles an e_shstrndx section of type SHT_GROUP by omitting a trailing '\0' character.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

Published 2019-06-26 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.018 (77.6th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 78th percentile — 77.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.018 · newest: 0.018 · change: 0.000

Affected products

GNU Binutils — versions 2.32
Canonical Ubuntu Linux — versions 18.04
openSUSE Leap — versions 15.1, 15.2

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-125 — Out-of-bounds Read

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi (Exploit, Patch, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi
www.securityfocus.com/bid/108903 (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry, Broken Link)
usn.ubuntu.com/4336-1/ (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
security.gentoo.org/glsa/202007-39 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)
lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-10/msg00078.html (vendor-advisory, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-11/msg00004.html (vendor-advisory, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2019-12972?: CVE-2019-12972 is a medium-severity vulnerability in GNU Binutils, classified under Out-of-bounds Read. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2019-06-26.
How severe is CVE-2019-12972?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.
Is CVE-2019-12972 known to be exploited?: 3 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.