NSF Unidata NetCDF-C Time Unit stack-based overflow

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in NSF Unidata NetCDF-C. It has been classified as critical. This affects an unknown part of the component Time Unit Handler. The manipulation leads to stack-based overflow. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2025-14932. It is possible to initiate the attack remotely. There is no exploit available.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in NSF Unidata NetCDF-C (unknown version) and classified as critical. This issue affects an unknown code block of the component Time Unit Handler. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a stack-based overflow vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to 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). Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

NSF Unidata NetCDF-C Time Unit 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 time units. 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-27273.

It is possible to read the advisory at zerodayinitiative.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2025-14932. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be initiated remotely. No form of authentication is needed for a successful exploitation. It demands that the victim is doing some kind of user interaction. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 12/28/2025).

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 279827 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2025-14932), 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 (279827) and EUVD (EUVD-2025-204809). Be aware that VulDB is the high quality source for vulnerability data.

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Vendor

• NSF Unidata

Name

• NetCDF-C

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Be aware that VulDB is the high quality source for vulnerability data.

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