CVE-2026-35369
Received Received - Intake
Argument Parsing Flaw in uutils kill Causes System-wide Process Termination

Publication date: 2026-04-22

Last updated on: 2026-05-04

Assigner: Canonical Ltd.

Description
An argument parsing error in the kill utility of uutils coreutils incorrectly interprets kill -1 as a request to send the default signal (SIGTERM) to PID -1. Sending a signal to PID -1 causes the kernel to terminate all processes visible to the caller, potentially leading to a system crash or massive process termination. This differs from GNU coreutils, which correctly recognizes -1 as a signal number in this context and would instead report a missing PID argument.
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Meta Information
Published
2026-04-22
Last Modified
2026-05-04
Generated
2026-06-16
AI Q&A
2026-04-22
EPSS Evaluated
2026-06-15
NVD
CVE-2026-35369
EUVD
EUVD-2026-25017
Affected Vendors & Products
Showing 1 associated CPE
Vendor Product Version / Range
uutils coreutils to 0.6.0 (exc)
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
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KEV
KEV Icon
CWE ID Description
CWE-20 The product receives input or data, but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input has the properties that are required to process the data safely and correctly.
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Executive Summary

This vulnerability is an argument parsing error in the kill utility of uutils coreutils. Specifically, when the command kill -1 is used, the utility incorrectly interprets it as a request to send the default signal (SIGTERM) to PID -1. Sending a signal to PID -1 causes the kernel to terminate all processes visible to the caller. This behavior differs from GNU coreutils, which correctly treats -1 as a signal number and reports a missing PID argument instead.

Impact Analysis

The impact of this vulnerability is that executing kill -1 on a system using the affected uutils coreutils can cause the kernel to terminate all processes visible to the user running the command. This can lead to a system crash or massive unintended process termination, potentially disrupting services and causing data loss or downtime.

Compliance Impact

The provided information does not specify any direct impact of this vulnerability on compliance with common standards and regulations such as GDPR or HIPAA.

Detection Guidance

This vulnerability involves the improper handling of the `kill` command with the argument `-1` in uutils coreutils, which can cause a system crash by sending signals to all processes visible to the caller.

To detect if your system is vulnerable, you can test the behavior of the `kill` command with the `-1` argument.

  • Run the command `kill -1` and observe the result.
  • If the command does not return an error and instead attempts to send a signal to PID -1 (potentially terminating many processes), your system is vulnerable.
  • If the command returns an error indicating a missing PID argument, your system has the fix applied.
Mitigation Strategies

The immediate mitigation step is to update the uutils coreutils package to a version that includes the fix for this vulnerability.

The fix was merged on December 19, 2025, and ensures that using `kill -1` correctly triggers an error instead of causing a system crash.

  • Update uutils coreutils to the latest version containing the fix from pull request #9700.
  • Avoid running `kill -1` or scripts that might invoke this command with `-1` as an argument until the update is applied.
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