GNU patch is vulnerable to a denial of service (DoS) due to improper validation of hunk (single block of changes in diff) line offsets in unified-diff input. A specially crafted patch can specify an extremely large line number, causing the application to enter an effectively infinite processing loop while attempting to locate the requested position. This results in excessive CPU consumption and prevents the process from completing. An attacker can trigger this behavior by supplying a malicious patch file, causing the utility to become unresponsive and require manual termination. This issue has been fixed in the commit faba04ef4f2b410257f76c1b9dc85e350929c4b9

The remote SUSE Linux SLED15 / SLED_SAP15 / SLES15 / SLES_SAP15 host has a package installed that is affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the SUSE-SU-2026:3161-1 advisory.

    This update for patch fixes the following issues

    - CVE-2026-56288: crafted unified-diff patch file can cause null pointer derefence (bsc#1271167).
    - CVE-2026-56289: improper validation of hunk line offsets can lead to denial of service (bsc#1271166).

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the SUSE security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

The remote SUSE Linux SLES16 / SLES_SAP16 host has a package installed that is affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the SUSE-SU-2026:22651-1 advisory.

    This update for patch fixes the following issues

    - CVE-2026-56288: crafted unified-diff patch file can cause null pointer derefence (bsc#1271167).
    - CVE-2026-56289: improper validation of hunk line offsets can lead to denial of service (bsc#1271166).

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the SUSE security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

The remote openSUSE 16 host has a package installed that is affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the openSUSE-SU-2026:21332-1 advisory.

    This update for patch fixes the following issues

    - CVE-2026-56288: crafted unified-diff patch file can cause null pointer derefence (bsc#1271167).
    - CVE-2026-56289: improper validation of hunk line offsets can lead to denial of service (bsc#1271166).

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the SUSE security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

The version of CBL-Mariner Releases installed on the remote Azure Linux 3.0 host is prior to tested version. It is, therefore, affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the CVE-2026-56289 advisory.

  - GNU patch is vulnerable to a denial of service (DoS) due to improper validation of hunk (single block of     changes in diff) line offsets in unified-diff input. A specially crafted patch can specify an extremely     large line number, causing the application to enter an effectively infinite processing loop while     attempting to locate the requested position. This results in excessive CPU consumption and prevents the     process from completing. An attacker can trigger this behavior by supplying a malicious patch file,     causing the utility to become unresponsive and require manual termination. This issue has been fixed in     the commit faba04ef4f2b410257f76c1b9dc85e350929c4b9 (CVE-2026-56289)

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

The remote SUSE Linux SLES12 host has a package installed that is affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the SUSE-SU-2026:2922-1 advisory.

    This update for patch fixes the following issues

    - CVE-2021-45261: Invalid Pointer via another_hunk function (bsc#1194037).
    - CVE-2026-56288: crafted unified-diff patch file can cause null pointer derefence (bsc#1271167).
    - CVE-2026-56289: improper validation of hunk line offsets can lead to denial of service (bsc#1271166).

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the SUSE security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

  - GNU patch is vulnerable to a denial of service (DoS) due to improper validation of hunk (single block of     changes in diff) line offsets in unified-diff input. A specially crafted patch can specify an extremely     large line number, causing the application to enter an effectively infinite processing loop while     attempting to locate the requested position. This results in excessive CPU consumption and prevents the     process from completing. An attacker can trigger this behavior by supplying a malicious patch file,     causing the utility to become unresponsive and require manual termination. This issue has been fixed in     the commit faba04ef4f2b410257f76c1b9dc85e350929c4b9 (CVE-2026-56289)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
328911	SUSE SLED15 / SLES15 Security Update : patch (SUSE-SU-2026:3161-1)	Nessus	SuSE Local Security Checks	medium
327590	SUSE SLES16 Security Update : patch (SUSE-SU-2026:22651-1)	Nessus	SuSE Local Security Checks	medium
327227	openSUSE 16 Security Update : patch (openSUSE-SU-2026:21332-1)	Nessus	SuSE Local Security Checks	medium
326978	Azure Linux 3.0 Security Update: CBL-Mariner Releases (CVE-2026-56289)	Nessus	Azure Linux Local Security Checks	medium
326962	SUSE SLES12 Security Update : patch (SUSE-SU-2026:2922-1)	Nessus	SuSE Local Security Checks	medium
326082	Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-56289	Nessus	Misc.	medium

Detections

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CVE-2026-56289

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medium