Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
CVE-2018-20461 affects radare2 before 3.1.1. A specially crafted binary file can crash the application during analysis. Business impact is mainly analyst workflow disruption, not confirmed data theft or system takeover in the supplied sources.
Executive priority
Treat this as a targeted operational reliability risk for teams using radare2. Prioritize remediation for malware analysis and reverse engineering environments that handle untrusted files.
Technical view
The issue is in core_anal_bytes in libr/core/cmd_anal.c. The CVE describes an out-of-bounds read that can trigger a denial-of-service crash when radare2 processes a crafted binary file. The source bundle does not provide CVSS, CWE, or broader affected platform details.
Likely exposure
Exposure is most likely where radare2 versions before 3.1.1 are used to inspect untrusted or externally supplied binaries, such as malware analysis, reverse engineering, triage, or security research workflows.
Exploitation context
The supplied CVE data says exploitation requires a crafted binary file. CISA KEV status is false, and the provided sources do not claim active exploitation or public weaponization.
Researcher notes
Evidence is limited to the CVE description, GitHub issue, and fixing commit. The key technical signal is an out-of-bounds read in core_anal_bytes causing an application crash from crafted input. No CVSS vector or CWE is provided.
Mitigation direction
- Upgrade radare2 to version 3.1.1 or later.
- Verify vendor guidance and release notes before deployment.
- Avoid analyzing untrusted binaries with vulnerable radare2 versions.
- Run binary analysis tooling in isolated workstations or sandboxes.
Validation and detection
- Inventory installed radare2 versions across analyst systems.
- Confirm no radare2 instance is older than 3.1.1.
- Review workflows that process externally supplied binaries.
- Check whether crashes align with radare2 binary analysis activity.
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-2018-20461 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/a1bc65c3db593530775823d6d7506a457ed95267CVE reference · x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/radare/radare2/issues/12375CVE 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.