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Low · 2.1 CVE-2026-53910 EUVD-2026-47695GHSA-9pwr-gcwm-8wj5

Heap-based Buffer Overflow in GNU diffutils

Published Jul 22, 2026 · Updated Jul 27, 2026 · Assigned by CERT-PL

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 products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
GNU diffutils ≤ 3.12 —

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 diffutils No fix yet —
Debian 13 diffutils No fix yet —
Debian 12 diffutils No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS diffutils 1:3.12-1ubuntu0.1 USN-8692-1
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS diffutils 1:3.10-1ubuntu0.1 USN-8692-1
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS diffutils 1:3.8-0ubuntu2.1 USN-8692-1
Show 4 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS diffutils 1:3.7-3ubuntu0.1~esm1 USN-8692-1
Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS diffutils 1:3.6-1ubuntu0.1~esm1 USN-8692-1
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS diffutils 1:3.3-3ubuntu0.1~esm1 USN-8692-1
Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS diffutils 1:3.3-1ubuntu0.1~esm1 USN-8692-1
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Red Hat Hardened Images 1 diffutils 3.12-6.1.hum1 RHSA-2026:45327

Advisories 2

References