CVE-2026-56289
GNU patch is vulnerable to a denial of service (DoS) due to improper validation of hunk (single block of changes in diff) line offsets in unified-diff input.
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.11%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
Description
GNU patch is vulnerable to a denial of service (DoS) due to improper validation of hunk (single block of changes in diff) line offsets in unified-diff input. A specially crafted patch can specify an extremely large line number, causing the application to enter an effectively infinite processing loop while attempting to locate the requested position. This results in excessive CPU consumption and prevents the process from completing. An attacker can trigger this behavior by supplying a malicious patch file, causing the utility to become unresponsive and require manual termination. This issue has been fixed in the commit faba04ef4f2b410257f76c1b9dc85e350929c4b9
- CVSS 4.0
- 4.6 MEDIUMCVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:L/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
- EPSS
- 0.11% probability · 2th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-835
- Affected
- gnu/patch
- Source
- cvd@cert.pl
EPSS 0.1% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
References
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.