Medium 5.1Published Jul 13, 2026

CVE-2026-40553Stack-based buffer overflow in gawk

Updated under an hour ago (Oct 28, 2026, 10:50 PM ET)

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It affects GNU gawk and 1 other product. Add what you run to find out whether that includes you.

No exploitation reported and no EPSS estimate yet.

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Every CVE for GNU gawk

Exploited in the last 30 days

Buffer overflow vulnerability has been found in "extension/readdir.c" program file of gawk (ftype() routine). This issue could be used to crash the program and potentially to achieve code execution, although the latter has not been confirmed to be feasible. It affects gawk in versions 5.4.0 and below.

CVSS: 5.1 MEDIUM (v4.0, CNA)CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:L/SC:L/SI:L/SA:L
Weakness (CWE): CWE-121
Known exploited: Not in CISA's KEV catalog
EPSS (exploitation in the next 30 days): Not loaded for this CVE
Assigned by: CERT-PL
NVD analysis: Analyzed
Record last updated: Jul 13, 2026
First seen by InfoSec Signals: Oct 9, 2026

Affected products

Affected products

GNU gawk gnu:gawk (from the name)	through 5.4.0	CNA record
fossies gawk fossies:gawk	through 5.4.0	NVD

References

References

https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gawk.git/commit/?id=cca0366144336b49aaa7d5d949966ce8e2c70843	patch
https://cert.pl/en/posts/2026/07/CVE-2026-40467	third-party-advisory

The CVE record on cve.org NVD's entry

The CVE record is authoritative. Products marked “from the name” were identified from the CNA's free-text names, not a CPE, and are matched less certainly. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.