DEBIAN-CVE-2026-100290: Low severity debian/glibc vulnerability
The regcomp and regexec functions in the GNU C Library version 2.3 to version 2.44 may read freed memory and free the same heap block twice when a memory allocation fails while a regular expression is compiled or matched. The redfaaddnode (the NFA node table) and buildrangeexp (bracket ranges) grow several arrays with consecutive realloc calls and store the new pointers only after all of them succeed. When a later call fails, the pattern buffer keeps pointers to blocks that were already freed, and the error cleanup frees them again. In regexec, the back-reference cache (matchctxaddentry) frees its array when a realloc fails but keeps the pointer, which is freed again on the error path. An attacker does not need to supply a crafted regular expression: patterns large enough to grow these arrays are common. The failure has to hit a specific allocation, though, so the issue can only be reached when the system is already under memory pressure. An attacker who supplies the pattern or the subject string has little control over which allocation fails, so the expected impact is a crash of the process. This issue affects all architectures and ABIs supported by the GNU C Library.
Affected Software
Event History
Frequently Asked Questions
Can this be exploited remotely without authentication or user interaction?
The CVSS vector indicates network attack access, with no privileges required and no user interaction required. Exploitation has high attack complexity.
What is the expected security impact if exploitation succeeds?
The reported impact is limited to low availability impact. No confidentiality or integrity impact is indicated, and the severity is rated low at 3.7.