Technical impact
An integer overflow occurs in gawk’s do_sub routine, which can corrupt heap metadata and object structures on the heap, causing the program to crash; the flaw is limited to 32‑bit builds of gawk version 5.4.0 and earlier and represents a classic overflow weakness (CWE‑190).
Affected Systems
GNU gawk 5.4.0 and earlier running as 32‑bit binaries are affected; no other vendors or product lines are listed, so systems relying on legacy gawk binaries from this version range are at risk.
Risk and Exploitability
The CVSS score of 5.1 indicates a moderate risk level. The EPSS score of less than 1% suggests a very low probability of exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability is not listed in CISA KEV. Exploitation would require crafted input to a running gawk instance, making the likely attack vector local or on systems where an attacker can execute gawk scripts, with the principal consequence being a denial of service due to a crash; no privilege escalation or data exfiltration is indicated.
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