CVE-2015-1396 Path traversal in n/a

What is CVE-2015-1396?

CVE-2015-1396 is a high-severity path traversal vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 25 Nov 2019. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A Directory Traversal vulnerability exists in the GNU patch before 2.7.4. A remote attacker can write to arbitrary files via a symlink attack in a patch file. NOTE: this issue exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2015-1196.

Weakness: CWE-22

Which versions are affected by CVE-2015-1396?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Gnu Patch.

How do I fix CVE-2015-1396?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, and resolve every user-supplied path against an allowed base folder before opening it. More about Path traversal.

Is CVE-2015-1396 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2015-1396 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

• CVE-2015-3306 ProFTPD Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2015-1396, GHSA-37cv-ggjj-37qh, UBUNTU-CVE-2015-1396.