What is CVE-2025-9136?

CVE-2025-9136 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Libretro Retroarch, classified under Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer. CVSS score: 5.3/10. Published 2025-08-19.

How severe is CVE-2025-9136?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.3 out of 10.

Is CVE-2025-9136 known to be exploited?

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

Buffer overflow in Libretro Retroarch

CVE-2025-9136

A flaw has been found in libretro RetroArch 1.18.0/1.19.0/1.20.0. This affects the function filestream_vscanf of the file libretro-common/streams/file_stream.c. This manipulation causes out-of-bounds read. The attack needs to be launched locally. Upgrading to version 1.21.0 mitigates this issue. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

Published 2025-08-19 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.3 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (8.5th percentile), scored 2026-10-05.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 8th percentile — 8.5% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.002 · change: +0.000

Affected products

Libretro Retroarch — versions 1.18.0, 1.19.0, 1.20.0

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feeds

References

vuldb.com/ (technical-description, VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)
vuldb.com/ (signature, Permissions Required, permissions-required, VDB Entry)
vuldb.com/ (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, third-party-advisory)
github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/17555 (issue-tracking, Patch, Issue Tracking)
github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/17555 (issue-tracking, Patch, Issue Tracking)
github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/17555/commits/6446f045ec7fc6a5cac3e8ec35a2f0… (issue-tracking, Patch, patch)
github.com/libretro/RetroArch/releases/tag/v1.21.0 (Release Notes, patch)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-9136?: CVE-2025-9136 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Libretro Retroarch, classified under Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer. CVSS score: 5.3/10. Published 2025-08-19.
How severe is CVE-2025-9136?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.3 out of 10.
Is CVE-2025-9136 known to be exploited?: 1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.