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Medium · 5.3 CVE-2026-71394 EUVD-2026-55257GHSA-jx5g-mm7r-35gq

Heap Use of Uninitialized Memory in GNU Emacs for Android

Published Aug 10, 2026 · Updated Aug 10, 2026 · Assigned by CERT-PL

Description

GNU Emacs for Android improperly validates the table header input in sfnt_read_table_directory() in src/sfnt.c. Due to an incorrect comparison variable in the read-length check, a crafted font file that claims to contain more table directory entries than actually present causes the parser to return a struct with uninitialized heap memory in the table directory entries. An attacker can deliver a malicious font file via email, EWW (Emacs Web Wowser), or documents with custom faces, causing Emacs to load it. This leads to the use of uninitialized heap data in subsequent table lookups, potentially resulting in information disclosure, crashes, or arbitrary memory access on 32-bit targets.

This issue is fixed after commit 7621ee1d01229d50e5c0cddea6bf0b01095a62cf

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
GNU Emacs ≤ 30.2 —

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
Ubuntu 26.10 emacs +2 No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS xemacs21 +1 No fix yet —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS xemacs21 +1 No fix yet —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS xemacs21 +1 No fix yet —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS xemacs21 +1 No fix yet —
Show 8 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS xemacs21 +1 No fix yet —
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS xemacs21 +1 No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 26.04 LTS emacs No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS emacs No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 22.04 LTS emacs No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS emacs No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS emacs25 No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS emacs24 No fix yet —

Advisories 1

References