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Classic Buffer OverflowWeakness · CWE-120

CVE-2025-69209

MEDIUM · 6.9 CVSS v4.0 Published 2026-01-21
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
74/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
No privileges Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
ArduinoCore-avr contains the source code and configuration files of the Arduino AVR Boards platform. A vulnerability in versions prior to 1.8.7 allows an attacker to trigger a stack-based buffer overflow when converting floating-point values to strings with high precision. By passing very large `decimalPlaces` values to the affected String constructors or concat methods, the `dtostrf` function writes beyond fixed-size stack buffers, causing memory corruption and denial of service. Under specific conditions, this could enable arbitrary code execution on AVR-based Arduino boards. ### Patches - The Fix is included starting from the `1.8.7` release available from the following link [ArduinoCore-avr v1.8.7](https://github.com/arduino/ArduinoCore-avr) - The Fixing Commit is available at the following link [1a6a417f89c8901dad646efce74ae9d3ddebfd59](https://github.com/arduino/ArduinoCore-avr/pull/613/commits/1a6a417f89c8901dad646efce74ae9d3ddebfd59) ### References - [ASEC-26-001 ArduinoCore-avr vXXXX Resolves Buffer Overflow Vulnerability](https://support.arduino.cc/hc/en-us/articles/XXXXX) ### Credits - Maxime Rossi Bellom and Ramtine Tofighi Shirazi from SecMate (https://secmate.dev/)

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-120

A fixed-size buffer is filled without checking the length of the incoming data, so it overflows into neighbouring memory. This is the classic overflow attackers use to overwrite return addresses and hijack execution. The fix is strict length checks and safe, bounded string and memory functions.

General guidance for the classic buffer overflow class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
Authentication
X
User interaction
None
Scope
X

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

ArduinoCore-avr v1.8.7

  1. Identify the current version of ArduinoCore-avr being used in your project (check boards manager or boards.txt)
  2. For Arduino CLI users: run 'arduino-cli core update-index' then 'arduino-cli core install arduino:[email protected]' to install the fixed version
  3. For Arduino IDE users: Open Boards Manager (Tools > Board > Boards Manager), search for 'Arduino AVR Boards', and update to version 1.8.7 or later
  4. Verify the installation by checking that the version now shows 1.8.7 or higher

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2025-69209 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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