CVE-2026-56289

Severity CVSS v4.0:

MEDIUM

Type:

Unavailable / Other

Publication date:

09/07/2026

Last modified:

13/07/2026

Description

GNU patch is vulnerable to a denial of service (DoS) due to improper validation of hunk (single block of changes in diff) line offsets in unified-diff input. A specially crafted patch can specify an extremely large line number, causing the application to enter an effectively infinite processing loop while attempting to locate the requested position. This results in excessive CPU consumption and prevents the process from completing. An attacker can trigger this behavior by supplying a malicious patch file, causing the utility to become unresponsive and require manual termination. This issue has been fixed in the commit faba04ef4f2b410257f76c1b9dc85e350929c4b9

Impact

Vector 4.0

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:L CVSS v4.0 Severity and Metrics:

Base Score: 4.60 MEDIUM
Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:L

Attack Vector (AV): Local
Attack Complexity (AC): Low
Attack Requirements (AT): None
Privileges Required (PR): None
User Interaction (UI): Active
Confidentiality (VC): None
Integrity (VI): None
Availability (VA): Low
Confidentiality (SC): None
Integrity (SI): None
Availability (SA): Low

Base Score 4.0

4.60

Severity 4.0

MEDIUM

Vector 3.x

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H CVSS v3.1 Severity and Metrics:

Base Score: 5.50 MEDIUM
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector (AV): Local
Attack Complexity (AC): Low
Privileges Required (PR): Low
User Interaction (UI): None
Scope (S): Unchanged
Confidentiality (C): None
Integrity (I): None
Availability (A): High