Heap Use of Uninitialized Memory in GNU Emacs for Android
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- Passive
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Attack requirements
- None
- Impact type
- —
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- None · None · Low
- Fix status
- No fix listed
Attack profile from CVSS 4.0 · CNA. Fix status from CNA.
Summary
GNU Emacs for Android improperly validates the table header input in sfnt_read_table_directory() in src/sfnt.c. Due to an incorrect comparison variable in the read-length check, a crafted font file that claims to contain more table directory entries than actually present causes the parser to return a struct with uninitialized heap memory in the table directory entries. An attacker can deliver a malicious font file via email, EWW (Emacs Web Wowser), or documents with custom faces, causing Emacs to load it. This leads to the use of uninitialized heap data in subsequent table lookups, potentially resulting in information disclosure, crashes, or arbitrary memory access on 32-bit targets. This issue is fixed after commit 7621ee1d01229d50e5c0cddea6bf0b01095a62cf
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- None
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Partial
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
Remediation
No fixed version listed by the sources yet.
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
Not affected: 5 products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-71394
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-jx5g-mm7r-35gq
References
More GNU vulnerabilities
- TI-2026-19388 telnetd in GNU Inetutils through 2.7 allows remote authentication bypass via a "-f root"… KEVCVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
- TI-2014-05975 GNU Bash through 4.3 bash43-025 processes trailing strings after certain malformed… KEVCVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
- TI-2014-05157 GNU Bash through 4.3 processes trailing strings after function definitions in the values… KEVCVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
- TI-2014-05164 GNU Bash through 4.3 bash43-026 does not properly parse function definitions in the… KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8
- TI-2023-04522 Glibc: buffer overflow in ld.so leading to privilege escalation KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 7.8
- TI-2009-03392 The TLS protocol, and the SSL protocol 3.0 and possibly earlier, as used in Microsoft… CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
Sources
- CVE-2026-71394 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-71394 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-jx5g-mm7r-35gq · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-71394 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. Sources and licences