CVE-2026-19542: the gnu c library glibc Stack-based Buffer Overflow

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-19542 is a medium (CVSS 5.6) Stack-based Buffer Overflow vulnerability in the gnu c library glibc. EPSS estimates a 0.23% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 12.4% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 14-09-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 14-09-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

Calling tdelete on a sufficiently deep tree in the GNU C Library version 2.1 to 2.44 may write one pointer past the end of an alloca-allocated array on the stack, which may crash the application. The tdelete implementation keeps an explicit stack of parent nodes for rebalancing, which is grown as needed while descending the tree. Two rebalancing branches push an additional entry without checking the capacity, and write past the array when the stack is exactly full. Triggering this requires a node at a depth of exactly 40 (or 40 plus a multiple of 20), which implies a tree with at least a million nodes, so an attacker must drive a large number of insertions and deletions through an application that uses tsearch and tdelete. The written value is a pointer into a tree node and is not directly attacker controlled. No affected application in common distributions has been identified.

• CWE-121Stack-based Buffer OverflowA stack-based buffer overflow condition is a condition where the buffer being overwritten is allocated on the stack (i.e., is a local variable or, rarely, a parameter to a function).