CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2019-20454 — Pcre Pcre2 security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.5

An out-of-bounds read was discovered in PCRE before 10.34 when the pattern \X is JIT compiled and used to match specially crafted subjects in non-UTF mode. Applications that use PCRE to parse untrusted input may be vulnerable to this flaw, which would allow an attacker to crash the application. The flaw occurs in do_extuni_no_utf in pcre2_jit_compile.c.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.5 (3.1)
Published
2020-02-14
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-125

Affected products

  • pcre / pcre2
  • fedoraproject / fedora / 31
  • splunk / universal_forwarder
  • splunk / universal_forwarder / 9.1.0

Showing 4 representative product identities from 5 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Buffer bounds, memory safety, and memory corruption

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Identify affected native-code versions, build flags, architectures, parsers, codecs, drivers, and input paths in all shipped artifacts.
  • Determine whether untrusted data reaches the affected routine and the process privilege, sandbox, and network exposure.
  • Confirm statically linked, vendored, firmware, and platform-provided copies, not only package-manager records.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the maintained upstream correction or replace the affected component, then rebuild every dependent artifact from clean inputs.
  • Adopt bounds-checked interfaces, validated sizes and integer conversions, clear ownership, and memory-safe components where practical.
  • Enable supported compiler and runtime hardening and add sanitized tests and fuzz regression seeds derived from non-weaponized fixtures.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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