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Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-72522

medium Nessus Plugin ID 333617

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Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

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

 - libexpat before 2.8.3 has an out-of-bounds read and resultant infinite loop because low surrogates are treated the same as high surrogates during Unicode processing in the *_toUtf16 functions. (CVE-2026-72522)

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

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

See Also

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2026-72522

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-72522

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 333617

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2026_72522.nasl

Version: 1.3

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 8/10/2026

Updated: 8/11/2026

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3

Percentile: 23.72

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5

Temporal Score: 4.3

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-72522

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.2

Temporal Score: 5.7

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:U/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:centos:centos:7, cpe:/o:centos:centos:8, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:11.0, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:12.0, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:13.0, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:14.0, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:10, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:9, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:firefox-x11, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:firefox, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:mingw-expat, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:mingw32-expat, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:mingw64-expat, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:thunderbird, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:expat, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:firefox-x11, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:firefox, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:mingw-expat, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:mingw32-expat, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:mingw64-expat, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:thunderbird

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, global_settings/vendor_unpatched, Host/OS/identifier

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/10/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-72522