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GawkApplication · Fossies

CVE-2026-40468

CRITICAL · 9.1 CVSS v3.1 Published 2026-07-13
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to after 5.4.0 or later.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available 5 weeks old

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Integer overflow vulnerability has been found in "builtin.c" program file of gawk. This issue may lead to memory exhaustion on the hosting operating system and could be used to overwrite gawk heap metadata and objects with attacker-controlled bytes. It affects gawk in versions 5.4.0 and below.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-190

An arithmetic operation produces a value too large for its type and wraps around to an unexpected — often tiny or negative — number. That miscalculated value then drives a memory allocation or a bounds check, opening the door to corruption. The fix is checked arithmetic and validating sizes before they're used.

General guidance for the integer overflow class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
GawkApplication
Affected:<= 5.4.0

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to a release after 5.4.0
Vendor patch cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org →
Recommended fix Moderate confidence

gawk version greater than 5.4.0 (e.g., 5.4.1 or later when released)

  1. 1. Check the current installed gawk version by running: gawk --version
  2. 2. Download the patched version of gawk that includes the fix for CVE-2026-40468
  3. 3. Alternatively, apply the vendor patch from commit 062f2f2581b991362c046f7f2e238ffa34e6f8c7 (https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gawk.git/commit/?id=062f2f2581b991362c046f7f2e238ffa34e6f8c7) to the source code and recompile
  4. 4. Verify the patch was applied correctly by reviewing the changes to builtin.c
  5. 5. Rebuild and install gawk with the patched source
  6. 6. Confirm the new version is running and test that the integer overflow vulnerability is no longer present

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can identify the exact fixed release, upgrade, and verify it in staging — typical engagement from $3,550. Get the upgrade done

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2026-40468 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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