CVE-2021-20197 (GCVE-0-2021-20197)
Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2021-03-26 16:47 – Updated: 2025-12-03 15:08
VLAI
EPSS
VEX
Summary
There is an open race window when writing output in the following utilities in GNU binutils version 2.35 and earlier:ar, objcopy, strip, ranlib. When these utilities are run as a privileged user (presumably as part of a script updating binaries across different users), an unprivileged user can trick these utilities into getting ownership of arbitrary files through a symlink.
Severity
6.3 (Medium)
SSVC
Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical Impact: total
CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)
Decision recorded 2025-12-03 15:08 UTC
CWE
Assigner
References
4 references
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1913743 | x_refsource_MISC |
| https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=26945 | x_refsource_MISC |
| https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-2021052… | x_refsource_CONFIRM |
| https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202208-30 | vendor-advisoryx_refsource_GENTOO |
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Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
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Nomenclature
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The MITRE ATT&CK techniques below are AI-generated suggestions, inferred from the description of the
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The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
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