CVE-2019-13638 Command injection in n/a

What is CVE-2019-13638?

CVE-2019-13638 is a high-severity command injection vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 26 Jul 2019. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

GNU patch through 2.7.6 is vulnerable to OS shell command injection that can be exploited by opening a crafted patch file that contains an ed style diff payload with shell metacharacters. The ed editor does not need to be present on the vulnerable system. This is different from CVE-2018-1000156.

Weakness: CWE-78

Which versions are affected by CVE-2019-13638?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Gnu Patch.

How do I fix CVE-2019-13638?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, and pass arguments to programs as a list instead of through a shell. More about Command injection.

Is CVE-2019-13638 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2019-13638 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 ALPINE-CVE-2019-13638, AZL-35106, AZL-6790, CLEANSTART-2026-LC02147, DEBIAN-CVE-2019-13638, GHSA-vqpq-8jvg-rwmx and 2 more.