CVE-2025-45333
📋 TL;DR
CVE-2025-45333 is a Null Pointer Dereference vulnerability in berkeley-abc's abc 1.1 software that causes segmentation faults and program crashes when processing specific inputs. This affects users of the abc tool for logic synthesis and formal verification. The vulnerability can disrupt automated workflows and cause data loss in processing pipelines.
💻 Affected Systems
- berkeley-abc abc
📦 What is this software?
Abc by Berkeley Abc
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Complete denial of service in automated synthesis/verification pipelines, causing data corruption and workflow disruption in chip design environments.
Likely Case
Program crashes during specific logic equivalence checking operations, requiring manual restart and potentially losing intermediate results.
If Mitigated
Controlled crashes with proper error handling and logging, minimal impact on overall system stability.
🎯 Exploit Status
Proof of concept available in GitHub pull request #383. Exploitation requires ability to feed specific inputs to abc's processing functions.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: Fixed in commit referenced in GitHub PR #383
Vendor Advisory: https://github.com/berkeley-abc/abc/pull/383
Restart Required: Yes
Instructions:
1. Pull latest abc source from GitHub. 2. Apply patch from PR #383. 3. Recompile abc using 'make'. 4. Replace existing abc binary with newly compiled version.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Input validation wrapper
linuxCreate wrapper script that validates inputs before passing to abc's vulnerable functions
#!/bin/bash
# Validate input file exists and is non-empty
if [ ! -s "$1" ]; then
echo "Error: Invalid input file"
exit 1
fi
# Run abc with safe parameters
abc -c "read $1; cec" 2>/dev/null || echo "Processing error"
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Isolate abc usage to dedicated containers/sandboxes to contain crashes
- Implement comprehensive error handling and restart mechanisms in automation scripts using abc
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Test with known triggering inputs from GitHub PR #383 or check if abc version is 1.1 without the fix commitCheck Version:
abc -v 2>&1 | head -1Verify Fix Applied:
Apply test case from PR #383 - if abc processes without segmentation fault, fix is applied📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Segmentation fault (core dumped) messages in system logs
- Abnormal termination of abc processes with signal 11 (SIGSEGV)
Network Indicators:
- N/A - local tool execution
SIEM Query:
process.name:"abc" AND (event.action:"segmentation_fault" OR exit_code:139)