CVE-2018-20969: GNU Patch

High severity, CVSS 7.8. EPSS: 2.7% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

do_ed_script in pch.c in GNU patch through 2.7.6 does not block strings beginning with a ! character. NOTE: this is the same commit as for CVE-2019-13638, but the ! syntax is specific to ed, and is unrelated to a shell metacharacter.

Affected products

• GNU Patch: up to and including 2.7.6

Published 2019-08-16. Last modified 2026-06-17.