Vulnerability · Published Jul 22, 2026 · Assigned by CERT-PL
CVE-2026-53910Heap-based Buffer Overflow in GNU diffutils
Low 2.1
In plain English
A low-severity integer overflow in diffutils from GNU. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.3% (higher than 26% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
diff3 tool from GNU diffutils is vulnerable to a heap‑based buffer overflow due to multiple signed integer overflows in line‑mapping calculations. Incorrect arithmetic in mapping line ranges can result in corrupted values being used for memory allocation and loop bounds. When processing crafted diff output, these overflows may cause the application to allocate insufficient memory and subsequently perform out‑of‑bounds writes during internal processing. An attacker who can control the output of the diff program used by diff3 (e.g. via --diff-program pointing to a malicious script) can trigger out-of-bounds writes, resulting in a crash and potentially remote code execution depending on the environment. This issue has been fixed in commit 9ff04d5b84743e331e80b589335a52c5480d1815 NOTE: The project maintainers claim that this is not a security issue. They state that the worst outcome this issue can cause is a crash of diff and that it cannot be used to escalate privileges.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian:12 | diffutils | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-53910 |
| Debian:13 | diffutils | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-53910 |
| Debian:14 | diffutils | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-53910 |
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | diffutils | 1:3.8-0ubuntu2.1 | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-53910 |
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | diffutils | 1:3.8-0ubuntu2.1 | USN-8692-1 |
| Ubuntu:24.04:LTS | diffutils | 1:3.10-1ubuntu0.1 | USN-8692-1 |
| Ubuntu:24.04:LTS | diffutils | 1:3.10-1ubuntu0.1 | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-53910 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | diffutils | 1:3.12-1ubuntu0.1 | USN-8692-1 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | diffutils | 1:3.12-1ubuntu0.1 | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-53910 |
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-190 · Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:L/SC:L/SI:L/SA:L
References
- https://cert.pl/en/posts/2026/07/CVE-2026-53910 third-party-advisory
- https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/diffutils.git/ product
- https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/diffutils.git/commit/?id=73ed7ce85cc78effb94daf028c9af6b4e5252e50 patch
- https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/diffutils.git/commit/?id=9ff04d5b84743e331e80b589335a52c5480d1815 patch