CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2026-40468 — Integer overflow vulnerability has been found in "builtin.c" program file of gawk
Critical
CVSS 9.1
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.
- Severity
- Critical
- CVSS
- 9.1 (3.1)
- Published
- 2026-07-13
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-190
Affected products
- fossies / gawk
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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