CVE-2026-56389: gnu bison OS Command Injection

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-56389 is a high (CVSS 8.6) OS Command Injection vulnerability in gnu bison. EPSS estimates a 0.22% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 12.2% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 29-07-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 29-07-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

GNU Bison allows for an execution of an arbitrary program during HTML report generation due to improper handling of grammar-defined configuration variables. A grammar file can override the executable used for the XML‑to‑HTML transformation step via %define tool.xsltproc, which is accepted without restriction and passed directly to execvp(). When running bison --html on a attacker-provided grammar, this behavior allows execution of an arbitrary program with the privileges of the Bison process. Maintainers of this project were notified about this vulnerability, and fixed the issue in commit 3169c1e7a2c6acc4c59dfcf8b089896d6881925b. However, they did not provide vulnerable version range. Version 3.8.2 was tested and confirmed as vulnerable, other versions were not tested but might also be vulnerable.

• CWE-78Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection')The product constructs all or part of an OS command using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the intended OS command when it is sent to a downstream component.