What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2019-17544

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.1 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 3.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2019-10-14 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-125

Description

libaspell.a in GNU Aspell before 0.60.8 has a stack-based buffer over-read in acommon::unescape in common/getdata.cpp via an isolated \ character.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 12.04, 14.04, 16.04, 18.04, 19.04
• GNU Aspell: before 0.60.8 — fixed in 0.60.8

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: GNU Aspell 0.60.8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://bugs.chromium.org/p/oss-fuzz/issues/detail?id=16109
• https://github.com/GNUAspell/aspell/commit/80fa26c74279fced8d778351cff19d1d8f44fe4e
• https://github.com/GNUAspell/aspell/compare/rel-0.60.7...rel-0.60.8
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2019/10/msg00027.html
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/07/msg00021.html
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/4155-1/
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/4155-2/
• https://www.debian.org/security/2021/dsa-4948
• https://bugs.chromium.org/p/oss-fuzz/issues/detail?id=16109
• https://github.com/GNUAspell/aspell/commit/80fa26c74279fced8d778351cff19d1d8f44fe4e
• https://github.com/GNUAspell/aspell/compare/rel-0.60.7...rel-0.60.8
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2019/10/msg00027.html

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