Vulnerability in flawfinder (CVE-2026-48813)
Summary
Vulnerability in flawfinder (CVE-2026-48813). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Mitigation: upgrade to 2.0.20 or later.
Original description
The description as published by the source.
Impact
This vulnerability is an improper input neutralization issue leading to output manipulation, specifically, Terminal/ANSI Escape Sequence Injection and XML Injection:
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Terminal Output Spoofing: A malicious file whose name contains ANSI escape sequences can end up being included in flawfinder's standard terminal output, with many effects. For example, this might allow an attacker to hide critical scan results, falsely making it appear to a human reviewer that no security issues were found.
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CSV and XML Injection: Untrusted fields (such as filenames, categories, or code context text) were not properly sanitized when generating structured reports. An attacker could exploit this to corrupt CSV formats or inject arbitrary XML attributes into SonarQube outputs via output_sonar().
It impacts those who use flawfinder to evaluate intentionally malicious filenames or file contents.
The initial filename injection problem was reported by Dan Lenz https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-lenz/
The other vulnerabilities were found by flawfinder project leader David A. Wheeler, GitHub david-a-wheeler, https://dwheeler.com/
Patches
This issue has been fully patched in Version 2.0.20 (released 2026-05-16). All users should upgrade to version 2.0.20 or later immediately. If you use Python's package manager, you can upgrade using pip install --upgrade flawfinder. If you are consuming flawfinder via GitHub Actions, ensure your workflow points to david-a-wheeler/flawfinder@2.0.20…
Source: GitHub Security Advisories (Global) NVD GitHub Advisory
Auto-generated summary
Assembled by SecPulse from the source data (CVSS, CWE, affected versions) using templates — no AI involved. Check the original description and references below for exact details.
A vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-48813 has been found in flawfinder.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade flawfinder to 2.0.20 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "flawfinder CVE-2026-48813" on the vendor's site.
CVE-2026-48813 (flawfinder) — CWE-74
Patched: 2.0.20 — apply immediately
Plan: 1) Audit SBOM/dependencies, 2) Stage→prod upgrade, 3) Add WAF/proxy monitoring on affected endpoints, 4) Hunt IOCs in logs.
Refs: see the GHSA / vendor advisory / patched release linked on this page.
A vulnerability (CWE-74) exists in flawfinder.
Check the vendor advisory for the affected versions of flawfinder.
Severity: ?. Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
Update to 2.0.20.
Until the patch is applied: disable the affected feature, apply WAF rules, or restrict access via network ACLs.
Search webserver/proxy logs for unusual request patterns matching this CVE's known IOCs. Run grep -r 'flawfinder' . against your dependency files (package-lock.json, requirements.txt, go.sum) to find affected services.
Response actions
Concrete steps and command examples for SOC/SRE teams to execute in order
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1Identify exposure identify
grep -r 'flawfinder' . | grep -v node_modulesリポジトリと本番環境の依存ファイル (package-lock.json / requirements.txt / go.sum / Gemfile.lock 等) で
flawfinderを grep し、稼働しているサービス・バージョンを把握する。 -
2Apply patch patch
Upgrade flawfinder to 2.0.20ステージング環境で 2.0.20 に上げて回帰テスト → 本番反映。回帰テストはアプリの主要ハッピーパスを含めること。
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3Post-deployment verification verify
Confirm patched version is live in productionパッチ適用後、ステージングで PoC または同等の悪用パターンを再現して脆弱性が閉じたことを確認。本番ではアクセスログ・WAF でアラート再発が無いか継続監視。
Affected packages
Fix status by distribution
Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE
- Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2026-48813 flawfinder
References
- advisory nvd.nist.gov
- package github.com
- web github.com
- web github.com
- web github.com