CVE-2026-44950

Publication date 10 September 2026

Last updated 28 September 2026


Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

9.0 · Critical

Score breakdown

Description

fs_read_glyphs() in the libXfont2 font-server client (src/fc/fserve.c) copies each glyph's bitmap into a single buffer. Existing checks validates only that the source slice (position, length) lies within the source bitmap buffer. It does not check whether the running destination cursor has exceeded the allocation. A malicious font server can send overlapping source offsets -- for example 1000 glyphs each referencing {position:0, length:64} with nbytes=64. Each individual source range passes the existing validation, but the cumulative writes total 64000 bytes into a 64-byte destination buffer. This is a heap buffer overflow with attacker-controlled content.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Package Ubuntu Release Status
libxfont 26.04 LTS resolute
Not affected
24.04 LTS noble
Not affected
22.04 LTS jammy
Not affected
20.04 LTS focal
Not affected
18.04 LTS bionic
Not affected
16.04 LTS xenial
Not affected
14.04 LTS trusty
Not affected
libxfont2 26.04 LTS resolute Not in release
24.04 LTS noble Not in release
22.04 LTS jammy Not in release
16.04 LTS xenial
Needs evaluation

Notes


nickgalanis

The vulnerable code is in the font-server client (src/fc/fserve.c). Ubuntu builds libxfont with --disable-fc, so src/fc/* is not compiled and the code is not in any shipped binary.

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package Patch details
libxfont

Severity score breakdown

CVSS version:

Base score 9.5 · Critical

Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H

Base score 9.0 · Critical

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H


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