CVE-2026-103658
Received
Received - Intake
Heap-based Buffer Overflow in GNU Aspell
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-103658, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-10-12
Last updated on: 2026-10-12
Assigner: 98a01053-8a31-4f6d-9aa9-252be161adc6
Description
Description
GNU Aspell 0.60.8.2 (first vulnerable version is not known) contains a heap-based buffer overflow write (CWE-122) in its read-only dictionary loader. String::reserve() in common/string.hpp computes its capacity check with a signed int ((int)s + 1), so a requested size of 0x7FFFFFFF wraps negative and the backing buffer is never grown. ReadOnlyDict::load() in modules/speller/default/readonly_ws.cpp passes the unvalidated 32-bit size fields from a .rws dictionary header into this path, so a crafted .rws file with a valid endian marker (12345678) and an oversized length field (e.g. lang_name_size = 0x7FFFFFFF) causes attacker-controlled data to be written out of bounds past an undersized heap allocation. An attacker who induces a victim to load a malicious dictionary — for example via aspell dump master — can corrupt heap memory, resulting in denial of service and potentially code execution. Fixed in b830b6e and will be fixed in release 0.60.8.3.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| GNU | Aspell | 0.60.8.2 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-122 | A heap overflow condition is a buffer overflow, where the buffer that can be overwritten is allocated in the heap portion of memory, generally meaning that the buffer was allocated using a routine such as malloc(). |
