Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-38754 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-38754 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-38754?
- Informational severity, with a CVSS score of 0, published 15 July 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Busybox 1.38.0.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-38754?
- A patch was published on 2026-06-16: Patch submitted to BusyBox mailing list Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2026-38754 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-38754?
- Check whether you run Busybox at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
A vulnerability exists in the ash shell component of BusyBox v1.38.0 within the ifsbreakup() function in shell/ash.c. The issue stems from the function skipping over control characters (CTLESC) without verifying if the subsequent byte remains within the bounds of the recorded memory region. If a CTLESC character is the final byte in a region, the pointer increments past the allocated buffer, leading to an out-of-bounds read or heap overflow. Additionally, the function may use stale region data after error unwinding. An attacker can exploit this by providing crafted input to the shell, leading to a crash (DoS). A patch has been proposed to cap scans to the current stack block and validate bounds during character processing.
Affected products
- BusyBox BusyBox 1.38.0
Timeline
- 2026-06-16: patched: Patch submitted to BusyBox mailing list
- 2026-07-15: disclosed: CVE published to NVD