CVE-2026-53910
LowCVSS 2.1Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk17th percentile - higher than 17% of all known CVEs
Summary
A heap-based buffer overflow in the diff3 tool from GNU diffutils due to multiple signed integer overflows in line-mapping calculations. An attacker controlling diff3 input (e.g., via --diff-program) can trigger out-of-bounds writes, leading to a crash or potentially remote code execution.
Risk Assessment
Potential remote code execution in environments where diff3 processes malicious data poses a serious risk of system compromise.
Recommendation
Apply the fix from commit 9ff04d5b84743e331e80b589335a52c5480d1815 or update diffutils to a patched version. Restrict access to the diff3 tool.
Original NVD description (English source)
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 NOTE: The project maintainers claim that this is not a security issue. They state that the worst outcome this issue can cause is a crash of diff and that it cannot be used to escalate privileges.