uutils/coreutils · Security
kill: 'kill -1' parsed as PID -1, sending SIGTERM to all processes (system crash / DoS)
- GHSA ID
- GHSA-p6rv-2qpm-fwvg
- CVE ID
- CVE-2026-35369
- Severity
- medium
- Published
- Updated
- CVSS
- 5.5 · CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CVSS v3
- 5.5 · CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Description
kill -1 is incorrectly parsed as a positional pid = -1; combined with the default SIGTERM this calls kill(-1, SIGTERM), signaling nearly every process the caller can see. GNU kill recognizes -1/-9 as signals and reports "not enough arguments".
$ kill -1 # uutils: kill(-1, SIGTERM) -> mass termination / crash
$ kill -1 # GNU: kill: not enough arguments
Impact: a user running kill -1 mass-terminates processes, potentially crashing the system. Recommendation: parse -N as a signal number, and error with "not enough arguments" when no PID is given.
Remediation: Acknowledged by Canonical; fixed in commit cae94028.
Reported by Zellic in the uutils coreutils Program Security Assessment (prepared for Canonical, Jan 20 2026), audited commit 3a07ffc5a9bd4c283e75afa548ba1f1957bad242. Finding 3.70. Credit: Zellic.
CWEs
- CWE-20 · Improper Input Validation
- CWE-754 · Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions
References
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/security/advisories/GHSA-p6rv-2qpm-fwvg ↗
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-35369 ↗
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/pull/9700 ↗
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/commit/2d3aebce6712841bc08b9b94e9078be50a25fc10 ↗
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/releases/tag/0.6.0 ↗
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-p6rv-2qpm-fwvg ↗