CVE-2026-35369
mediumpriority · track · 0EPSS 0.001 · 2 %ileEUUSEPSS · scored 2026-10-27
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 PID -1 causes the kernel to terminate all processes visible to the caller, potentially leading to a system crash or massive process termination. This differs from GNU coreutils, which correctly recognizes -1 as a signal number in this context and would instead report a missing PID argument.
cvss
Technical severity, 0–10. One row per scoring source.
base score 0–10 · higher = more severe · hover a vector to decode
ssvc
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weaknesses
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affected products (4)
Products and version ranges known to be affected.
advisories (2)
Vendor and ecosystem advisories describing this.
- GHSA-gpcg-h6x2-c26pDuplicate Advisory: uutils coreutils has an Improper Input Validation issue2026-04-22ghsa · osvUS
### Duplicate Advisory This advisory has been withdrawn because it is a duplicate of GHSA-p6rv-2qpm-fwvg. This link is maintained to preserve external references. ### Original Description 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 PID -1 causes the kernel to terminate all processes visible to the caller, potentially leading to a system crash or massive process termination. This differs from GNU coreutils, which correctly recognizes -1 as a signal number in this context and would instead report a missing PID argument.
- GHSA-p6rv-2qpm-fwvgkill: 'kill -1' parsed as PID -1, sending SIGTERM to all processes (system crash / DoS)2026-07-06ghsa · osvUS
`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._
also known as (4)
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sources
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references (5)
External citations — patches, advisories, analysis.
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-35369cnnvd
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/pull/9700enisa_euvd
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/releases/tag/0.6.0enisa_euvd
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/pull/9700Issue TrackingPatchnvd
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/releases/tag/0.6.0Release Notesnvd
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