CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-84243

HighCVSS 7.0
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.30%

22th percentile - higher than 22% of all known CVEs

Summary

A vulnerability in the GNU C Library (glibc) version 2.0 and later affects the gettext family of functions, which accept LANGUAGE environment variable entries containing '/' or equal to '..'. This allows an attacker to load a crafted message catalog (.mo file) from an arbitrary filesystem location, potentially crashing the program or executing arbitrary code with the program's privileges. The flaw is not covered by the earlier CVE-2014-0475 fix, which addressed other environment variables.

Risk Assessment

An organization may be exposed to arbitrary code execution or application crashes if an attacker can set LANGUAGE and LANG/LC_ALL in the environment of a program using gettext, for example via an SSH server with AcceptEnv. This may allow bypassing account restrictions and privilege escalation.

Recommendation

Update GNU C Library to a version containing the fix for CVE-2026-84243. Additionally, restrict acceptance of LANGUAGE and LANG/LC_ALL from untrusted sources (e.g., disable or narrow AcceptEnv in SSH) and ensure message catalog directories are not writable by users.

Other vulnerabilities in GNU C Library

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

The gettext family of functions in the GNU C Library version 2.0 and later accept LANGUAGE environment variable entries that contain '/' or that are equal to "..", unless the program is setuid or setgid (AT_SECURE). An attacker who can set LANGUAGE in the environment of a program that uses gettext can make it load a message catalog (.mo file) from an arbitrary location in the file system. A crafted .mo file can crash the program through out-of-range offsets, or supply translations whose format directives do not match the arguments passed by the program. That causes undefined behaviour in the printf family of functions and may allow arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the program. The safety of message catalogs relies on them being installed in trusted, read-only locations, and the directory traversal bypasses this. The fix for CVE-2014-0475 rejects ".." path components in locale names passed to setlocale or taken from the LC_ALL, LC_* and LANG environment variables. gettext reads LANGUAGE directly and appends each colon-separated entry to the message catalog directory, so that fix did not cover LANGUAGE. LANGUAGE is only used when the LC_MESSAGES locale is not "C", "C.<encoding>" or "POSIX", so the attacker must also be able to select another installed locale, for example through LANG or LC_ALL. Exploitation also requires that the attacker can place the crafted file in a location readable by the target program, and that the environment crosses a trust boundary without the program running as AT_SECURE. An example is an SSH server that accepts LANGUAGE and LANG from clients through the AcceptEnv directive and restricts an account to a forced command; the attacker may use this to escape the restriction.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS