CVE-2020-21047

The libcpu component which is used by libasm of elfutils version 0.177 (git 47780c9e), suffers from denial-of-service vulnerability caused by application crashes due to out-of-bounds write (CWE-787), off-by-one error (CWE-193) and reachable assertion (CWE-617); to exploit the vulnerability, the attackers need to craft certain ELF files which bypass the missing bound checks.

Published: 2023-08-22 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2020-21047 is rated Low Risk (22/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.01%). Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2020-21047

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2025-11-21 0.05% 0.01% -0.04%
2 2025-11-18 0.00% 0.05% +0.05%
3 2025-03-17 — 0.00% —

Full EPSS history (5 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2020-21047

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 1.8 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2020-21047

OS Trackers for CVE-2020-21047

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2020-21047 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (elfutils), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2020-21047
suse low CVE-2020-21047 severity low: SUSE including 16 source package names (elfutils, elfutils-lang, …), 446 product×package rows across 50 product lines (SUSE CaaS Platform 4.0, SUSE Enterprise Storage 7, … (50 product lines)): Known Not Affected 446. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-21047/
ubuntu medium CVE-2020-21047 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (elfutils), 7 status rows across 7 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, lunar, trusty, upstream, xenial): released 5, not-affected 2. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2020-21047

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2020-21047

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
elfutils_project elfutils 0.177 cpe:2.3:a:elfutils_project:elfutils:0.177:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2020-21047

cvelogic Threat Intelligence