Detections
Analytics

CentOS 9 : gawk-5.1.0-7.el9

medium Nessus Plugin ID 339714

Synopsis

The remote CentOS host is missing one or more security updates for gawk.

Description

The remote CentOS Linux 9 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the gawk-5.1.0-7.el9 build changelog.

 - Integer overflow vulnerability has been found in builtin.c program file of gawk. This issue may lead to memory exhaustion on the hosting operating system and could be used to overwrite gawk heap metadata and objects with attacker-controlled bytes. It affects gawk in versions 5.4.0 and below. (CVE-2026-40468)

 - Use After Free vulnerability has been found in io.c program file of gawk (do_getline_redir() routine).
 This issue may lead to a crash. It affects gawk in versions 5.4.0 and below. (CVE-2026-40467)

 - Buffer overflow vulnerability has been found in extension/readdir.c program file of gawk (ftype() routine). This issue could be used to crash the program and potentially to achieve code execution, although the latter has not been confirmed to be feasible. It affects gawk in versions 5.4.0 and below.
 (CVE-2026-40553)

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

Solution

Update the CentOS 9 Stream gawk package.

See Also

https://kojihub.stream.centos.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=125802

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 339714

File Name: centos9_gawk-5_1_0-7_125802.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Published: 8/26/2026

Updated: 8/26/2026

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.3

Percentile: 53.6

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 9.4

Temporal Score: 7

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-40468

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.1

Temporal Score: 7.9

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

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

CVSS v4

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.1

Threat Score: 1.2

Threat Vector: CVSS:4.0/E:U

Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:L/SC:L/SI:L/SA:L

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-40553

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/a:centos:centos:9, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:gawk-all-langpacks, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:gawk-devel, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:gawk-doc, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:gawk

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/CentOS/release, Host/CentOS/rpm-list, Host/cpu

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 8/24/2026

Vulnerability Publication Date: 7/13/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-40467, CVE-2026-40468, CVE-2026-40553