CVE-2026-56288 | GNU patch is vulnerable to a NULL pointer dereference when p… | CVSS 4.6 MEDIUM

Description

GNU patch is vulnerable to a NULL pointer dereference when processing a specially crafted unified-diff patch file. Improper handling of consecutive end-of-file newline markers can corrupt internal hunk (single block of changes in diff) data structures, causing the application to pass a NULL pointer to fwrite() during patch processing. An attacker can trigger this condition with a malicious patch file, causing the utility to crash and resulting in a denial of service. This issue has been fixed in the commit e6d6a4e021660679d7fc9150f981d4920f722313

Metadata

CVE ID: CVE-2026-56288
State: PUBLISHED
Assigner: CERT-PL
Reserved: 2026-06-20 10:58 UTC
Published: 2026-07-09 09:29 UTC
Last updated: 2026-07-09 12:57 UTC
Primary CWE: CWE-476
CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference
Vendor / Product: GNU / patch
Sources: cve.org · NVD

Severity & Metrics

4.6 MEDIUM CVSS 4.0

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

SSVC — CISA Coordinator

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Tech. Impact: partial

Affected products (1)

Vendor	Product	Platform	Versions
GNU	patch	—	0 ≤ 2.8.0

Weakness (CWE)

CWE	Source	Description
CWE-476	cna	CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference

CVSS scores (1)

Score	Severity	Version	Source	Vector
4.6	MEDIUM	4.0	cna	CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

References (3)