NSF Unidata NetCDF-C Attribute Name stack-based overflow

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability has been found in NSF Unidata NetCDF-C and classified as critical. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown functionality of the component Attribute Name Handler. Performing a manipulation results in stack-based overflow. This vulnerability is reported as CVE-2025-14936. The attack is possible to be carried out remotely. No exploit exists.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, was found in NSF Unidata NetCDF-C (the affected version unknown). This affects an unknown part of the component Attribute Name Handler. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a stack-based overflow vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-121. A stack-based buffer overflow condition is a condition where the buffer being overwritten is allocated on the stack (i.e., is a local variable or, rarely, a parameter to a function). This is going to have an impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

NSF Unidata NetCDF-C Attribute Name Stack-based Buffer Overflow Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected installations of NSF Unidata NetCDF-C. User interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability in that the target must visit a malicious page or open a malicious file. The specific flaw exists within the parsing of attribute names. The issue results from the lack of proper validation of the length of user-supplied data prior to copying it to a fixed-length stack-based buffer. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to execute code in the context of the current user. Was ZDI-CAN-27269.

The advisory is shared at zerodayinitiative.com. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2025-14936. The exploitability is told to be easy. It is possible to initiate the attack remotely. No form of authentication is needed for exploitation. It demands that the victim is doing some kind of user interaction. Neither technical details nor an exploit are publicly available. The price for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 12/29/2025).

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 279741 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2025-14936), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Tenable (279741) and EUVD (EUVD-2025-204814). If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

Productinfo

Vendor

• NSF Unidata

Name

• NetCDF-C

CPE 2.3info

• 🔒
• 🔒

CPE 2.2info

• 🔒
• 🔒

CVSSv4info

CVSSv3info

CVSSv2info

Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

Countermeasuresinfo

Timelineinfo

Sourcesinfo

Entryinfo

If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

Discussion