Race Condition in GNU Sed

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Summary

CVECVE-2026-5958
StatePUBLISHED
AssignerCERT-PL
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-04-20 12:16:08 UTC
Updated2026-04-20 12:16:08 UTC
DescriptionWhen sed is invoked with both -i (in-place edit) and --follow-symlinks, the function open_next_file() performs two separate, non-atomic filesystem operations on the same path: 1. resolves symlink to its target and stores the resolved path for determining when output is written, 2. opens the original symlink path (not the resolved one) to read the file. Between these two calls there is a race window. If an attacker atomically replaces the symlink with a different target during that window, sed will: read content from the new (attacker-chosen) symlink target and write the processed result to the path recorded in step 1. This can lead to arbitrary file overwrite with attacker-controlled content in the context of the sed process. This issue was fixed in version 4.10.

Risk And Classification

Primary CVSS: v4.0 2.1 LOW from [email protected]

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Problem Types: CWE-367 | CWE-367 CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition

VersionSourceTypeScoreSeverityVector
4.0[email protected]Secondary2.1LOWCVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/C...
4.0CNACVSS2.1LOWCVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

CVSS v4.0 Breakdown

Attack Vector
Local
Attack Complexity
Low
Attack Requirements
Present
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
Low
Availability
None
Sub Conf.
None
Sub Integrity
None
Sub Availability
None

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA GNU Sed affected 4.1e 4.10 custom Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
www.gnu.org/software/sed [email protected] www.gnu.org
cert.pl/en/posts/2026/04/CVE-2026-5958 [email protected] cert.pl
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis

Vendor Comments And Credit

Discovery Credit

CNA: Michał Majchrowicz (AFINE Team) (en)

CNA: Marcin Wyczechowski (AFINE Team) (en)

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