GHSA-p6rv-2qpm-fwvg

ghsaUSosv

kill: 'kill -1' parsed as PID -1, sending SIGTERM to all processes (system crash / DoS)

view advisory published 2026-07-06Licence: CC-BY-4.0

`kill -1` is incorrectly parsed as a positional `pid = -1`; combined with the default SIGTERM this calls `kill(-1, SIGTERM)`, signaling nearly every process the caller can see. GNU `kill` recognizes `-1`/`-9` as signals and reports "not enough arguments". ``` $ kill -1 # uutils: kill(-1, SIGTERM) -> mass termination / crash $ kill -1 # GNU: kill: not enough arguments ``` **Impact:** a user running `kill -1` mass-terminates processes, potentially crashing the system. Recommendation: parse `-N` as a signal number, and error with "not enough arguments" when no PID is given. **Remediation:** Acknowledged by Canonical; fixed in commit cae94028. --- _Reported by Zellic in the *uutils coreutils Program Security Assessment* (prepared for Canonical, Jan 20 2026), audited commit `3a07ffc5a9bd4c283e75afa548ba1f1957bad242`. Finding 3.70. Credit: Zellic._

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describes (1)

Related CVEs.

IDseverity exploitable
CVE-2026-35369US——
An argument parsing error in the kill utility of uutils coreutils incorrectly interprets kill -1 as a request to send the default signal (SIGTERM) to PID -1. Sending a signal to PI…
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