REDHAT-BUG-2494158: Medium severity GNU gzip vulnerability

Published Jun 29, 2026
·
Updated

GNU gzip contains a vulnerability in the gzexe utility related to insecure temporary file handling. When the mktemp utility is not available in the user’s PATH, gzexe falls back to constructing a temporary file path based solely on the process ID (PID). This predictable filename is created without exclusive access or existence checks. A local attacker can pre‑create the predicted temporary file path as a symbolic link pointing to an arbitrary file writable by the victim. When gzexe runs, it follows the symlink and overwrites the target file, resulting in a time‑of‑check to time‑of‑use (TOCTOU) condition that allows arbitrary file overwrite.

This issue has been fixed in the commit 4e6f8b24ab823146ab8776f0b7fe486ab34d4269

Affected Software

1 affected component
GNU gzip

Remediation

Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.

  1. Upgrade

    Upgrade GNU gzip (gzexe utility) to a version that resolves this vulnerability.

    Patch 4e6f8b24ab823146ab8776f0b7fe486ab34d4269

Event History

Jun 29, 2026
Data Sourced
via Red Hat·12:01 PM
DescriptionSeverityAffected Software

Contact

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