CVE-2026-56288

Description

GNU patch is vulnerable to a NULL pointer dereference when processing a specially crafted unified-diff patch file. Improper handling of consecutive end-of-file newline markers can corrupt internal hunk (single block of changes in diff) data structures, causing the application to pass a NULL pointer to fwrite() during patch processing. An attacker can trigger this condition with a malicious patch file, causing the utility to crash and resulting in a denial of service. This issue has been fixed in the commit e6d6a4e021660679d7fc9150f981d4920f722313

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Weakness Type (CWE)

CWE-476 CWE-476

References

Other References

https://cert.pl/en/posts/2026/07/CVE-2026-56288 https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/patch.git/ https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/patch.git/commit/?id=e6d6a4e021660679d7fc9150f981d4920f722313

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2026-56288? +

GNU patch is vulnerable to a NULL pointer dereference when processing a specially crafted unified-diff patch file. Improper handling of consecutive end-of-file newline markers can corrupt internal hunk (single block of changes in diff) data structures, causing the application to pass a NULL pointer to fwrite() during patch processing. An attacker can trigger this condition with a malicious patch file, causing the utility to crash and resulting in a denial of service. This issue has been fixed in the commit e6d6a4e021660679d7fc9150f981d4920f722313

How do I check if I'm vulnerable to CVE-2026-56288? +

You can use Secably's free Website Scanner to check your website for known vulnerabilities. For infrastructure scanning, use the Port Scanner to identify exposed services that may be affected. Check the vendor advisories linked above for specific patch and version information.

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