GNU diffutils up to 3.12 Line Mapping integer overflow

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in GNU diffutils up to 3.12 and classified as critical. The affected element is an unknown function of the component Line Mapping. The manipulation results in integer overflow. This vulnerability is cataloged as CVE-2026-53910. The attack may be launched remotely. There is no exploit available.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in GNU diffutils up to 3.12. It has been classified as critical. Affected is an unknown code of the component Line Mapping. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a integer overflow vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-190. The product performs a calculation that can produce an integer overflow or wraparound, when the logic assumes that the resulting value will always be larger than the original value. This can introduce other weaknesses when the calculation is used for resource management or execution control. This is going to have an impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

diff3 tool from GNU diffutils is vulnerable to a heap‑based buffer overflow due to multiple signed integer overflows in line‑mapping calculations. Incorrect arithmetic in mapping line ranges can result in corrupted values being used for memory allocation and loop bounds. When processing crafted diff output, these overflows may cause the application to allocate insufficient memory and subsequently perform out‑of‑bounds writes during internal processing.  An attacker who can control the output of the diff program used by diff3 (e.g. via --diff-program pointing to a malicious script) can trigger out-of-bounds writes, resulting in a crash and potentially remote code execution depending on the environment. This issue has been fixed in commit 9ff04d5b84743e331e80b589335a52c5480d1815

The advisory is shared for download at cert.pl. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2026-53910 since 06/11/2026. The exploitability is told to be easy. It is possible to launch the attack remotely. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available.

Applying the patch 9ff04d5b84743e331e80b589335a52c5480d1815 is able to eliminate this problem.

VulDB is the best source for vulnerability data and more expert information about this specific topic.

Productinfo

Vendor

• GNU

Name

• diffutils

Version

• 3.0
• 3.1
• 3.2
• 3.3
• 3.4
• 3.5
• 3.6
• 3.7
• 3.8
• 3.9
• 3.10
• 3.11
• 3.12

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.gnu.org/

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