CVE-2025-54480
Published: 25 August 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-54480 is a critical-severity Stack-based Buffer Overflow (CWE-121) vulnerability in Libbiosig Project Libbiosig. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203); ranked in the top 44.1% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SI-16 (Memory Protection).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Requires timely remediation of the known stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in libbiosig by applying patches from the Talos advisory.
Mandates bounds checking and validation of MFER file lengths during parsing to prevent overflows into fixed-size buffers.
Implements memory protections such as stack canaries, ASLR, and DEP to block arbitrary code execution from stack buffer overflows.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Stack-based buffer overflow in file parser enables direct arbitrary code execution on client applications processing malicious MFER input with no user interaction required.
NVD Description
A stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the MFER parsing functionality of The Biosig Project libbiosig 3.9.0 and Master Branch (35a819fa). A specially crafted MFER file can lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can provide a malicious file to…
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trigger this vulnerability.This vulnerability manifests on line 8719 of biosig.c on the current master branch (35a819fa), when the Tag is 0: if (tag==0) { if (len!=1) fprintf(stderr,"Warning MFER tag0 incorrect length %i!=1\n",len); curPos += ifread(buf,1,len,hdr); }
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-54480 is a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the MFER parsing functionality of The Biosig Project's libbiosig version 3.9.0 and the master branch at commit 35a819fa. The flaw manifests in biosig.c at line 8719 during processing of a tag value of 0, where the code reads data into a fixed-size buffer without adequate bounds checking: if (tag==0) { if (len!=1) fprintf(stderr,"Warning MFER tag0 incorrect length %i!=1\n",len); curPos += ifread(buf,1,len,hdr); }. A specially crafted MFER file can trigger the overflow, leading to arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability is classified under CWE-121 with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H).
An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability by providing a malicious MFER file to any application or system that processes files using the affected libbiosig library. Exploitation requires low complexity and no user interaction, allowing the attacker to achieve arbitrary code execution with high impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Details on mitigation and patches are available in the Talos Intelligence advisory at https://talosintelligence.com/vulnerability_reports/TALOS-2025-2234.
Details
- CWE(s)