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VulnerabilityPublished

CVE-2026-84243: The GNU C Library glibc · Path Traversal

Affects The GNU C Library glibcSource CVE Database V5

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Mentioned vulnerabilities

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.0 High.

Data as of 30 Oct 2026, 17:48 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score
7.0High
How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

Thin evidence

One scorer or none
CVSS scores by source
CNA (glibc)CVSS 3.17.0
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Exploitation evidence

  1. Disclosed: evidence found.

    CVE published 30 Oct 2026

  2. Detectable: no evidence on record.

    No public nuclei template indexed

  3. Weaponized: no evidence on record.

    No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB

  4. Exploited in the wild: no evidence on record.

    Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation

  5. Observed by OffSeq Mirage: no evidence on record.

    No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 30 Oct 2026.

What to do

Affected software

ProductAffectedFixed in
The GNU C LibraryglibcAffected
  • >=2.0
Fixed in–

Description

The gettext family of functions in the GNU C Library version 2.0 and later accept LANGUAGE environment variable entries that contain '/' or that are equal to "..", unless the program is setuid or setgid (AT_SECURE). An attacker who can set LANGUAGE in the environment of a program that uses gettext can make it load a message catalog (.mo file) from an arbitrary location in the file system. A crafted .mo file can crash the program through out-of-range offsets, or supply translations whose format directives do not match the arguments passed by the program. That causes undefined behaviour in the printf family of functions and may allow arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the program. The safety of message catalogs relies on them being installed in trusted, read-only locations, and the directory traversal bypasses this. The fix for CVE-2014-0475 rejects ".." path components in locale names passed to setlocale or taken from the LC_ALL, LC_* and LANG environment variables. gettext reads LANGUAGE directly and appends each colon-separated entry to the message catalog directory, so that fix did not cover LANGUAGE. LANGUAGE is only used when the LC_MESSAGES locale is not "C", "C.<encoding>" or "POSIX", so the attacker must also be able to select another installed locale, for example through LANG or LC_ALL. Exploitation also requires that the attacker can place the crafted file in a location readable by the target program, and that the environment crosses a trust boundary without the program running as AT_SECURE. An example is an SSH server that accepts LANGUAGE and LANG from clients through the AcceptEnv directive and restricts an account to a forced command; the attacker may use this to escape the restriction.

References

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