NULL Pointer Dereference Affecting patch package, versions <2.7.6-150000.5.12.1


Severity

Recommended
medium

Based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.12% (2nd percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-SLES157-PATCH-18165990
  • published22 Jul 2026
  • disclosed21 Jul 2026

Introduced: 21 Jul 2026

CVE-2026-56288  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-476  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade SLES:15.7 patch to version 2.7.6-150000.5.12.1 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream patch package and not the patch package as distributed by SLES. See How to fix? for SLES:15.7 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1