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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

PUBLISHED Reserved 2026-06-20 | Published 2026-07-09 | Updated 2026-07-09 | Assigner CERT-PL




MEDIUM: 4.6CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Problem types

CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference

Product status

Default status
unaffected

Any version
affected

Credits

Michał Majchrowicz (AFINE Team) finder

Marcin Wyczechowski (AFINE Team) finder

References

cert.pl/en/posts/2026/07/CVE-2026-56288 third-party-advisory

cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/patch.git/ product

cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/...1660679d7fc9150f981d4920f722313 patch

cve.org (CVE-2026-56288)

nvd.nist.gov (CVE-2026-56288)

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