Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
CVE-2018-20457 is a radare2 crash bug triggered by specially crafted ARM assembly input. For most organizations, the main business impact is interruption of reverse-engineering, malware-analysis, or security research workflows rather than direct compromise of production systems.
Executive priority
Treat this as a moderate operational risk for teams that rely on radare2. Prioritize remediation in security research and malware-analysis environments where untrusted inputs are routine.
Technical view
The issue affects radare2 through 3.1.3 in the assemble path around libr/asm/p/asm_arm_cs.c. The CVE describes an r_num_calc out-of-bounds read caused by incorrect loop indexing in armass.c and missing length validation in armass64.c, resulting in application denial of service.
Likely exposure
Exposure is most likely where radare2 is installed and used to assemble or analyze untrusted ARM assembly input, especially in malware analysis, exploit research, or file triage environments.
Exploitation context
The CVE source describes crafted input causing a crash. The bundle does not cite active exploitation, weaponized use, KEV listing, CVSS scoring, or remote unauthenticated exploitation.
Researcher notes
Evidence is limited to the CVE description, GitHub issue, and upstream commit reference. No CVSS vector, CWE, detailed advisory, or exploitation-in-the-wild evidence is provided in the bundle.
Mitigation direction
- Inventory radare2 installations and identify versions through 3.1.3.
- Review upstream radare2 guidance and the referenced fixing commit.
- Upgrade to a vendor-confirmed fixed or current maintained radare2 release.
- Avoid processing untrusted ARM assembly input on vulnerable versions.
- Run radare2 analysis tools in isolated research environments.
Validation and detection
- Confirm whether radare2 is present on analyst workstations and build systems.
- Record installed radare2 versions and compare against through 3.1.3 exposure.
- Check whether package builds include the referenced upstream fix.
- Review crash reports from radare2 ARM assembly workflows.
- Verify containment controls for untrusted sample analysis environments.
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-2018-20457 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/issues/12417CVE reference · x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/radareorg/radare2/commit/e5c14c167b0dcf0a53d76bd50bacbbcc0dfc1ae7CVE 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.