An issue was discovered in the merge_strings function in merge.c in the Binary File Descriptor (BFD) library (aka libbfd), as distributed in GNU Binutils 2.31. There is a NULL pointer dereference in _bfd_add_merge_section when attempting to merge sections with large alignments. A specially crafted ELF allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service, as demonstrated by ld.
https://usn.ubuntu.com/4336-1/
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23806
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20190307-0003/
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/105754
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00008.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-10/msg00072.html