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Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2015-4041 json

The keycompare_mb function in sort.c in sort in GNU Coreutils through 8.23 on 64-bit platforms performs a size calculation without consider…

published 2020-01-24 6 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2015-4069

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 44%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The keycompare_mb function in sort.c in sort in GNU Coreutils through 8.23 on 64-bit platforms performs a size calculation without considering the number of bytes occupied by multibyte characters, which allows attackers to cause a denial of service (heap-based buffer overflow and application crash) or possibly have unspecified other impact via long UTF-8 strings.

Patch / fix

  • coreutils SLES for SAP 12, SLES 12, SLED 12 8.22-9.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2015:1637-1

  • coreutils openSUSE Tumbleweed 8.26-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10390-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2015-4041 updated cvss 3.7

coreutils: heap buffer overflow in sort(1) keycompare_mb()

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 coreutils, coreutils-libs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 coreutils
    affected: workaround, no fix available “This flaw is triggered by using sort on specially crafted malicious data file. When using sort with trusted inputs, this flaw cannot be triggered.”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 coreutils
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.52% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 44% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • openwall.com http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/05/15/1 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.6 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.