Bug 2498468 (CVE-2026-56288)

Summary: CVE-2026-56288 patch: GNU patch: Denial of Service via specially crafted patch file
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
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Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in GNU patch. An attacker can exploit this by providing a specially crafted patch file, which leads to a NULL pointer dereference. This improper handling of end-of-file markers can corrupt internal data structures, causing the utility to crash. This results in a denial of service (DoS) for the affected system.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-07-09 11:01:30 UTC 
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