Vulnerability · Published Jan 28, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-24857bulk_extractor has Heap-based Buffer Overflow vulnerability
Medium 5.5
In plain English
A medium-severity heap buffer overflow in bulk_extractor from simsong. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.4% (higher than 38% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
`bulk_extractor` is a digital forensics exploitation tool. Starting in version 1.4, `bulk_extractor`’s embedded unrar code has a heap‑buffer‑overflow in the RAR PPM LZ decoding path. A crafted RAR inside a disk image causes an out‑of‑bounds write in `Unpack::CopyString`, leading to a crash under ASAN (and likely a crash or memory corruption in production builds). There's potential for using this for RCE. As of time of publication, no known patches are available.
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| simsong | bulk_extractor | >= 1.4, <= 2.1.1 |
Weakness: CWE-122 · Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P