CVE-2026-35378 uutils coreutils expr Local Denial of Service via Eager Evaluation of Parenthesized Subexpressions
A logic error in uutils coreutils expr causes premature script termination by failing to short-circuit logical operations, leading to denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-35378?
CVE-2026-35378 is a low-severity denial of service vulnerability in Uutils coreutils, published on 22 Apr 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
A logic error in the expr utility of uutils coreutils causes the program to evaluate parenthesized subexpressions during the parsing phase rather than at the execution phase. This implementation flaw prevents the utility from performing proper short-circuiting for logical OR (|) and AND (&) operations. As a result, arithmetic errors (such as division by zero) occurring within "dead" branches, branches that should be ignored due to short-circuiting, are raised as fatal errors. This divergence from GNU expr behavior can cause guarded expressions within shell scripts to fail with hard errors instead of returning expected boolean results, leading to premature script termination and breaking GNU-compatible shell control flow.
Weakness: CWE-768
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-35378?
2 open source packages ship an affected version, including coreutils. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
coreutils crates.io | All versions | 0.8.0 |
coreutils crates.io | All versions | 0.8.0 |
Products include Uutils Coreutils.
How do I fix CVE-2026-35378?
Upgrade coreutils to 0.8.0 or later.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2026-35378 being exploited?
It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2026-35378 exists.
Other vulnerabilities in Uutils coreutils
- CVE-2026-35338 uutils coreutils chmod Path Traversal Bypass of --preserve-root
- CVE-2026-35368 uutils coreutils chroot Local Privilege Escalation and chroot Escape in via Name Service Switch (NSS) Injection
- CVE-2026-35341 uutils coreutils mkfifo Unauthorized Permission Change on Existing Files
- CVE-2026-35352 uutils coreutils mkfifo Privilege Escalation via TOCTOU Race Condition
- CVE-2026-35349 uutils coreutils Path-Based Safety Bypass with --preserve-root
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2026-35378, GHSA-5pv5-xh52-hvrp, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-35378.