Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
CVE-2018-20456 is a crash issue in radare2 before 3.1.1. A specially crafted input file can trigger a stack-based buffer over-read during x86 operand parsing, causing the application to crash. The known impact is denial of service, not code execution.
Executive priority
Treat this as a low-priority resilience fix unless radare2 is used heavily in automated security pipelines. The business risk is analyst or job disruption, not confirmed compromise.
Technical view
The issue affects parseOperand in libr/asm/p/asm_x86_nz.c and manifests as an application crash in libr/util/strbuf.c. Public metadata describes a stack-based buffer over-read triggered by crafted input. It is related to CVE-2018-20455. No CVSS, CWE, or active exploitation evidence is provided.
Likely exposure
Exposure is most likely where radare2 before 3.1.1 processes untrusted binaries or files, especially in malware analysis, reverse engineering, CI, or automated triage workflows.
Exploitation context
The source bundle supports crafted-file denial of service only. It does not cite public exploitation in the wild, KEV listing, remote network exposure, privilege escalation, or arbitrary code execution.
Researcher notes
The evidence is sparse: CVE text, one GitHub issue, and one commit reference. Version boundary is clear, but exploitability details, CVSS, CWE mapping, and operational prevalence are not provided in the bundle.
Mitigation direction
- Upgrade radare2 to version 3.1.1 or later.
- Check radare2 vendor guidance and referenced commit history.
- Avoid processing untrusted files with vulnerable radare2 versions.
- Isolate automated analysis jobs that ingest external samples.
- Restart failed analysis workers rather than trusting partial output.
Validation and detection
- Inventory systems and containers using radare2.
- Confirm installed radare2 versions are not before 3.1.1.
- Identify workflows that pass untrusted files into radare2.
- Review crash logs for radare2 failures during x86 parsing.
- Verify patched builds against normal analysis workloads.
Public sources used
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Conservative CVE-to-ATT&CK context
These mappings and lookup hints may be relevant to the vulnerability behavior, CWE, affected product, or exposure path. Glexia-inferred context is not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, CWE, or CVE Program mapping.
ATT&CK lookup starting points
Use these exact CWE pages and searches to review the Glexia ATT&CK library from this CVE's weakness and description context.
CVE-2018-20456 mapping review
Open the CVE-to-ATT&CK bridge for reviewed, inferred, or future official mappings tied to this CVE.
Open ATT&CK lookup- Severity
- Unknown
- CVSS
- Not scored
- Known Exploited
- No
- Published
CNA and ADP enrichment extracted from CVE v5
These fields come from the CVE record and ADP containers, not from Glexia's Take. They preserve time-varying source decisions such as CISA SSVC, KEV status, CVSS metrics, and provider references.
CVSS and timeline data
No CVSS vectors or timeline events were available in the normalized CVE source material.
Source materials
- CVE List V5 sourceCVE List V5
- https://github.com/radare/radare2/commit/9b46d38dd3c4de6048a488b655c7319f845af185CVE reference · x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/radare/radare2/issues/12372CVE reference · x_refsource_MISC
Products and packages named in the record
CWE details
CWE links open Glexia weakness intelligence pages with official CWE context, developer remediation guidance, and related CVE mappings.