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Ubuntu 16.04 LTS : Gzip vulnerabilities (USN-8733-1)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 344618

Synopsis

The remote Ubuntu host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

The remote Ubuntu 16.04 LTS host has a package installed that is affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the USN-8733-1 advisory.

 Micha Majchrowicz and Marcin Wyczechowski discovered that Gzip's gzexe utility created temporary files in an insecure manner when mktemp was unavailable. A local attacker could possibly use this issue to overwrite arbitrary files. (CVE-2026-41991)

 Elias Hasas, Micha Majchrowicz and Marcin Wyczechowski discovered that Gzip incorrectly handled certain compressed files. An attacker could possibly use this issue to obtain sensitive information or cause Gzip to crash, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2026-41992)

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

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 affected gzip package.

See Also

https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8733-1

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 344618

File Name: ubuntu_USN-8733-1.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Published: 9/10/2026

Updated: 9/10/2026

Supported Sensors: Nessus Agent, Continuous Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5

Percentile: 93.47

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 5.8

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-41992

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 6.5

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

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

CVSS v4

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.9

Threat Score: 4.6

Threat Vector: CVSS:4.0/E:U

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:gzip

Required KB Items: Host/cpu, Host/Debian/dpkg-l, Host/Ubuntu, Host/Ubuntu/release

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 9/7/2026

Vulnerability Publication Date: 6/29/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-41991, CVE-2026-41992

USN: 8733-1