CVE-2026-56288

Summary

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

Affected Software

VendorProductVersion RangeStatus
GNUpatch0 <= 2.8.0affected

Weaknesses

  • CWE-476: CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference

ADP Enrichment

CISA ADP Vulnrichment

  • SSVC:
  • Exploitation: none
    • Automatable: no
    • Technical Impact: partial

References