Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-38755 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-38755 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-38755?
- 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-2026-38755?
- A patch was published on 2026-06-16: Patch proposed on BusyBox mailing list to limit recursion depth Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2026-38755 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access or over the network, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-38755?
- 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. The root cause is a lack of recursion depth limiting in the evalfun() function within shell/ash.c. An attacker can trigger this by supplying crafted input that causes recursive shell function calls, leading to stack exhaustion or a heap-related crash (reported as a heap overflow in the CVE description). A patch has been proposed to implement a MAX_ASH_FUNC_DEPTH limit of 1000 to prevent this exhaustion. The attack vector depends on how the shell processes external input; if the shell executes user-supplied scripts or commands, it can be exploited locally or remotely.
Affected products
- BusyBox BusyBox 1.38.0
Timeline
- 2026-06-16: patched: Patch proposed on BusyBox mailing list to limit recursion depth
- 2026-07-15: disclosed: CVE published to NVD