Medium severity · published Sep 22, 2026
CVE-2026-81879
radare2: Heap out-of-bounds read in radare2 ELF PN_XNUM handling
6.1
CVSS
0.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
radare2 is a UNIX-like reverse engineering framework and command-line toolset. Prior to 6.2.0, radare2's ELF PN_XNUM handling was vulnerable because the ELF parser allocated the program-header array using the resolved PN_XNUM count but several consumers still iterated with the original e_phnum value of 65535. The vulnerability is triggered by processing a crafted ELF file with e_phnum = 0xffff and a much smaller resolved count in shdr[0].sh_info. Consumers iterated beyond the allocated program-header array. This can cause a heap out-of-bounds read and process termination, resulting in denial of service; memory disclosure and code execution have not been demonstrated. This issue is fixed in version 6.2.0.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
Required
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.2% · higher than 8% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
RA
radare2 · radareorg
< 6.2.0 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-81879
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-81879
Patch
https://github.com/radareorg/radare2/commit/9449b07579c19b6b187c1a0918fbec2cef1a036e
Exploit
https://github.com/radareorg/radare2/issues/26223
Patch
https://github.com/radareorg/radare2/pull/26178
Release Notes
https://github.com/radareorg/radare2/releases/tag/6.2.0
Patch
https://github.com/radareorg/radare2/security/advisories/GHSA-jqfq-hvcp-xh4p
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