[PATCH] bfd: validate COFF and XCOFF symbol tables before the linker walks them
Project / Subsystem
binutils / bfd
Date
2026-10-04
Proposer
Harshit Kumar <harshit7kr@gmail.com>
Source type
public_inbox
Consensus
Proposed
Sentiment
—/10
Technical tradeoffs
- • Adding validation checks to prevent buffer overflows versus the potential minor performance overhead of these checks.
All attributes
- project
- binutils
- subsystem
- bfd
- patch_id
- —
- discussion_id
- CAOX--DQV9Xa_t_KTx-UaxHwAiErvLTC_+hGmNCYGK5o0QJS1zg@mail.gmail.com
- source_type
- public_inbox
- title
- [PATCH] bfd: validate COFF and XCOFF symbol tables before the linker walks them
- headline
- bfd: validate COFF and XCOFF symbol tables before linker walks them
- tldr
- Patch validates COFF and XCOFF symbol tables to prevent heap writes caused by out-of-bounds access.
- proposer
- Harshit Kumar <harshit7kr@gmail.com>
- consensus
- Proposed
- outcome
- proposed
- sentiment_score
- —
- technical_tradeoffs
-
- • Adding validation checks to prevent buffer overflows versus the potential minor performance overhead of these checks.
- series_id
- —
- series_role
- standalone
- series_parts
- []
- tags
-
- • binutils
- • bfd
- • coff
- • xcoff
- • security
- bugzilla_url
- —
- date
- 2026-10-04T00:00:00.000Z
[PATCH] bfd: validate COFF and XCOFF symbol tables before the linker walks them
This patch addresses heap buffer overflows in binutils’ COFF and XCOFF linkers by validating symbol tables before they are processed. Specifically, it corrects issues where a symbol’s auxiliary entries could point beyond the allocated buffer, leading to out-of-bounds writes, and aims to harden unvalidated paths present in generic COFF and XCOFF linking.