{"id":"CVE-2026-56288","title":"GNU patch is vulnerable to a NULL pointer dereference when processing a specially crafted unified-diff patch file","summary":"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) d…","severity":"medium","cvss":5.5,"cvssVector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H","cwe":["CWE-476"],"vendor":"gnu","product":"patch","affected":["patch <= 2.8.0"],"published":"2026-07-09","updated":"2026-07-13","source":"NVD","sourceUrl":"https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-56288","references":[{"url":"https://cert.pl/en/posts/2026/07/CVE-2026-56288","label":"cvd@cert.pl"},{"url":"https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/patch.git/","label":"cvd@cert.pl"},{"url":"https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/patch.git/commit/?id=e6d6a4e021660679d7fc9150f981d4920f722313","label":"cvd@cert.pl"}],"tags":["nvd"],"epss":0.00168,"epssPercentile":0.06438,"ingestedAt":"2026-07-13T14:27:27.150Z","slug":"CVE-2026-56288","body":"## Overview\n\nGNU 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.\nAn attacker can trigger this condition with a malicious patch file, causing the utility to crash and resulting in a denial of service.\n\n\n\nThis issue has been fixed in the commit e6d6a4e021660679d7fc9150f981d4920f722313\n\n## Affected\n\n- `patch <= 2.8.0`\n\n## Remediation\n\nRefer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.","depth":"sunlit","depthScore":30,"depthScoreParts":{"impact":30.3,"likelihood":0,"exploitation":0,"ransomware":0},"changes":[]}