Ubuntu 26.04 Gawk Critical Memory Management Denial of Service 8588-1

ubuntu

July 22, 2026

Ubuntu has addressed multiple vulnerabilities in Gawk affecting several LTS releases, potentially allowing denial of service or arbitrary code execution; users should update their ...

Summary

Several security issues were fixed in Gawk.

Software Description:

- gawk: GNU implementation of AWK

Details:

It was discovered that Gawk incorrectly handled memory when processing

input using the getline redirection. An attacker could possibly use

this issue to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2026-40467)

It was discovered that Gawk incorrectly handled certain integer

calculations when allocating memory. An attacker could possibly use

this issue to cause a denial of service or overwrite heap memory with

attacker-controlled data. (CVE-2026-40468)

It was discovered that Gawk incorrectly handled certain integer

calculations when performing substitutions. An attacker could possibly

use this issue to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2026-40469)

It was discovered that Gawk incorrectly handled memory when reading

directory entries. An attacker could possibly use this issue to cause

a denial of service or execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. (CVE-2026-40553)

...

Read the Full Advisory

Topics Covered

security advisory denial of service critical Ubuntu memory management gawk

Update Instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following
package versions:

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
  gawk                            1:5.3.2-1ubuntu1.1

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
  gawk                            1:5.2.1-2ubuntu0.1

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
  gawk                            1:5.1.0-1ubuntu0.2

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
  gawk                            1:5.0.1+dfsg-1ubuntu0.1+esm1
                                  Available with Ubuntu Pro

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
  gawk                            1:4.1.4+dfsg-1ubuntu0.1~esm2
                                  Available with Ubuntu Pro

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
  gawk                            1:4.1.3+dfsg-0.1ubuntu0.1~esm2
                                  Available with Ubuntu Pro

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
  gawk                            1:4.0.1+dfsg-2.1ubuntu2+esm2
                                  Available with Ubuntu Pro

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.