Bug 2511606

Summary: CVE-2026-18743 popt: Short realloc in poptConfigFileToString [fedora-all]
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Charles Timko <ctimko>
Component: poptAssignee: Robert Scheck <redhat-bugzilla>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: 45CC: ffesti, pmatilai, redhat-bugzilla
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security, SecurityTracking
Target Release: ---Flags: fedora-admin-xmlrpc: mirror+
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard: {"flaws": ["8a6e4fa9-e074-4eba-a2b4-b5e189c8f142"]}
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: ---
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Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 2510809    

Description Charles Timko 2026-08-05 15:30:39 UTC
Disclaimer: Community trackers are created by Red Hat Product Security team on a best effort basis. Package maintainers are required to ascertain if the flaw indeed affects their package, before starting the update process.

Buffer growth maxargvlen*2 can under-allocate relative to accumulated argvlen, yielding small heap overflow (~11 bytes / ~9 attacker-chosen) on crafted config content.

Flow: Privileged or unprivileged host loads attacker-influenced popt config → poptConfigFileToString → realloc/strcat overflow → heap metadata corruption (reporter).

Earliest affected is `popt-1_11-release` tag in git. `poptConfigFileToString()` must be explicitly called in order for this to be reachable, which is not used by the internal source.

src/poptparse.c:191-224

Comment 1 Aoife Moloney 2026-08-17 15:47:26 UTC
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora Linux 45 development cycle.
Changing version to 45.