david-a-wheeler flawfinder up to 2.0.19 output_sonar neutralization

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, has been found in david-a-wheeler flawfinder up to 2.0.19. Affected by this vulnerability is the function output_sonar. The manipulation leads to neutralization. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2026-48813. The attack is possible to be carried out remotely. No exploit exists.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, has been found in david-a-wheeler flawfinder up to 2.0.19. This issue affects the function output_sonar. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a neutralization vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-707. The product does not ensure or incorrectly ensures that structured messages or data are well-formed and that certain security properties are met before being read from an upstream component or sent to a downstream component. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

Flawfinder is a a static analysis tool for finding vulnerabilities in C/C++ source code. Versions prior to 2.0.20 have an improper input neutralization issue leading to output manipulation, specifically, Terminal/ANSI Escape Sequence Injection and XML Injection. A malicious file whose name contains ANSI escape sequences can end up being included in flawfinder's standard terminal output, with many effects. Untrusted fields (such as filenames, categories, or code context text) were not properly sanitized when generating structured reports. An attacker could exploit this to corrupt CSV formats or inject arbitrary XML attributes into SonarQube outputs via output_sonar(). It impacts those who use flawfinder to evaluate intentionally malicious filenames or file contents. This issue has been fully patched in Version 2.0.20 (released 2026-05-16). There is no configuration-based workaround within older versions of flawfinder. If an immediate upgrade is not possible, users can mitigate the risk by pre-scanning filenames, inspecting raw output, and/or restricting untrusted inputs.

It is possible to read the advisory at github.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-48813 since 05/22/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be initiated remotely. It demands that the victim is doing some kind of user interaction. Technical details of the vulnerability are known, but there is no available exploit.

Upgrading to version 2.0.20 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• david-a-wheeler

Name

• flawfinder

Version

• 2.0.0
• 2.0.1
• 2.0.2
• 2.0.3
• 2.0.4
• 2.0.5
• 2.0.6
• 2.0.7
• 2.0.8
• 2.0.9
• 2.0.10
• 2.0.11
• 2.0.12
• 2.0.13
• 2.0.14
• 2.0.15
• 2.0.16
• 2.0.17
• 2.0.18
• 2.0.19

Website

• Product: https://github.com/david-a-wheeler/flawfinder/

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