Vulnerability in GNU gawk

[ Description ]Official description

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.

[ Fixes ]Fixes and patches

No fix or interim patch is linked from our sources yet. Check the vendor references below and limit exposure of affected systems until a fix is available.

[ Advisories ]Government CERT advisories

• BSI CERT-Bund29 Sep 2026WID-SEC-2026-3649

  Red Hat Enterprise Linux (gawk): Multiple vulnerabilities Translated from German

  CVE-2026-40467CVE-2026-40468CVE-2026-40553

[ References ]References

• cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gawk.git/commitpatch
• cert.pl/en/posts/2026/07/CVE-2026-40467third-party-advisory