Skip to content
OpenAdvisories
Medium · 4.8 CVE-2026-115819 EUVD-2026-123550GHSA-rm44-gpwr-xh4q

Calling the wide scanf family of functions (swscanf, fwscanf, wscanf, vswscanf, vfwscanf and vwscanf) with a %s or %[ conversion without th…

Published Nov 11, 2026 · Assigned by glibc

Description

Calling the wide scanf family of functions (swscanf, fwscanf, wscanf, vswscanf, vfwscanf and vwscanf) with a %s or %[ conversion without the 'l' length modifier in the GNU C Library version 2.2 to version 2.44 writes an extra null byte one past the end of the destination array when the converted multibyte string and its terminating null byte exactly fill that array.

These conversions store each wide input character into the caller's char array as a multibyte sequence. The conversion ends with the sequence that returns to the initial shift state, which also stores the terminating null byte, and the functions then append a second null byte. A destination sized for the converted string and one terminator, as the C standard requires the caller to provide, is therefore written one byte past its end. The out-of-bounds byte is always a null byte, which may corrupt adjacent data or crash the process. An attacker who supplies the input can trigger the overflow with a string whose converted length exactly fills the destination.

The narrow scanf functions, the %ls and %l[ conversions into a wchar_t array, and the 'a' and 'm' allocation modifiers are not affected, and storing a wide scanf conversion into a narrow char array is uncommon. This issue affects all architectures and ABIs supported by the GNU C Library.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
The GNU C Library glibc 2.2 ≤2.44 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 glibc No fix yet —
Debian 13 glibc No fix yet —
Debian 12 glibc No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 glibc No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS glibc No fix yet —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS glibc No fix yet —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS glibc No fix yet —
Show 4 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS glibc No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS glibc No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS glibc No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS eglibc No fix yet —

Azure Linux

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Azure Linux 3 glibc No fix yet —

Advisories 1

References