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… (CVE-2026-56289)
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
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… (CVE-2026-56289)
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
CVSS v3.1
Score 5.5medium
Affected software
pkg:deb/ubuntu/[email protected]+esm1?arch=source&distro=esm-infra-legacy/trustypkg:deb/ubuntu/[email protected]?arch=source&distro=xenialpkg:deb/ubuntu/[email protected]?arch=source&distro=bionicpkg:deb/ubuntu/[email protected]?arch=source&distro=jammypkg:deb/ubuntu/[email protected]?arch=source&distro=noblepkg:deb/ubuntu/[email protected]?arch=source&distro=questingpkg:deb/ubuntu/[email protected]?arch=source&distro=resoluteRun on your own infrastructure? Check whether these packages are installed with threat-finder — our free open-source scanner.
Technical Details
- Gcve Source
- db.gcve.eu
- Osv Id
- UBUNTU-CVE-2026-56289
- Osv Schema Version
- 1.7.0
- Ecosystems
- ["Ubuntu:Pro:14.04:LTS","Ubuntu:16.04:LTS","Ubuntu:18.04:LTS","Ubuntu:20.04:LTS","Ubuntu:22.04:LTS","Ubuntu:24.04:LTS","Ubuntu:25.10","Ubuntu:26.04:LTS"]
- Cvss Version
- 4.0
- State
- PUBLISHED
Threat ID: 6a58b46f68715ace43d83ef2
Added to database: 07/16/2026, 10:37:35 UTC
Last enriched: 07/16/2026, 11:47:53 UTC
Last updated: 09/13/2026, 22:01:35 UTC
Views: 23
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