Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessDeliver crafted personal wordlist to user
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ExploitUser runs aspell loading the dictionary
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ExecutionInteger truncation in WritableDict::add()
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ImpactHeap corruption and process crash
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
ASVS 5.0
V15 - Secure Coding and Architecture Integer overflow checks
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Execution The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Exploitation Conditions | Exploitation requires the victim to run aspell while loading an attacker-supplied personal wordlist (custom dictionary) that contains at least one word whose length is an exact multiple of 256 bytes, triggering the single-byte length truncation in WritableDict::add(). Limiting factors: the attack is local only (no network vector), requires active user interaction to load the malicious dictionary, has high attack complexity (the specific 256-multiple length condition must be met), and yields only a denial of service - no confidentiality or code-execution impact is established. There is no default-configuration remote exposure. |
| Impact | This is a genuinely low-priority issue, and the signals are consistent in saying so. The CVSS 4.0 base score of 1.8 reflects a local attack vector (AV:L), high attack complexity (AC:H), and - critically - required active user interaction (UI:A): the victim must be convinced to run aspell against an attacker-supplied personal wordlist. Although PR:N indicates no authentication, the UI:A requirement and local vector mean this is not remotely exploitable. The only impact is low availability (VA:L) plus low subsequent-system integrity (SI:L) - i.e. heap corruption leading to a crash/denial of service, not confirmed code execution. No EPSS score, KEV listing, or POC was provided in the input, so there is no public exploit identified at time of analysis and no evidence of active exploitation. The integer-truncation mechanism (CWE-190, length-is-a-multiple-of-256 edge case) is real and vendor-confirmed via the fixing commit, but the practical risk is minimal because an attacker must socially engineer a user into running a crafted dictionary locally. No signals conflict here - low CVSS, low real-world impact, and low exploitability all align. Treat as routine patching, not an emergency. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker crafts a malicious personal wordlist containing a word whose length is an exact multiple of 256 bytes and tricks a user into loading it with aspell (e.g. distributing it as a shared custom dictionary). When WritableDict::add() truncates the stored length to a single byte, heap corruption occurs and the aspell process crashes, causing denial of service. No public exploit code was provided, and the high attack complexity plus required user interaction make this hard to weaponize. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Oct 06, 2026
Heap corruption in GNU Aspell's personal-wordlist handling lets a local attacker crash a user's spell-checking session by supplying a crafted dictionary file. All Aspell releases before 0.60.8.3 are affected: when a wordlist containing a word whose length is an exact multiple of 256 bytes is loaded, WritableDict::add() in modules/speller/default/writable.cpp stores the word length in a single byte, truncating it and corrupting heap memory, which results in denial of service rather than code execution or data disclosure. No public exploit identified at time of analysis, and the issue is not listed in CISA KEV; the vendor fix was published as commit 782ce94e4dc71eaec4ee1bd945eb3b9c47c5387d and is slated for release in version 0.60.8.3. With a CVSS 4.0 base score of 1.8 and an independent assessment of CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L, this is a genuinely low-priority issue: the attack is local-only, needs the victim to actively load an attacker-supplied dictionary, requires the specific multiple-of-256 length condition, and yields availability loss only.
RemediationAI
Apply the upstream fix by upgrading GNU Aspell to version 0.60.8.3 (or later) once available, or by cherry-picking commit 782ce94e4dc71eaec4ee1bd945eb3b9c47c5387d, which corrects the single-byte word-length field in WritableDict::add(); details are referenced from the CERT-PL post https://cert.pl/en/posts/2026/10/CVE-2026-75818 and the vendor site http://aspell.net/. Until the patched release is deployed, the most effective compensating control is to avoid loading personal dictionaries from untrusted sources: point aspell at a trusted personal wordlist path (or disable personal dictionary loading entirely) so attacker-supplied .pws files are never parsed, at the cost of losing per-user custom vocabularies for shared or downloaded dictionaries. A secondary mitigation is to sanitize or regenerate inbound wordlists before use, trimming or padding any entry whose byte length is an exact multiple of 256 so the truncation condition cannot be met, though this is error-prone and must be reapplied to every new dictionary. Running aspell under a sandbox, restricted user account, or service unit with memory limits does not prevent the heap corruption but contains the blast radius to a single spell-check process, and because exploitation requires a user to actively load the malicious dictionary (UI:A, AC:H) and only causes availability loss, no network-facing control or urgent emergency change is warranted; treat this as a routine maintenance upgrade rather than an incident response priority.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in euvd
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
GNU Aspell is a spell-checking library and command-line tool used directly and embedded in many applications; its personal dictionaries (wordlists) are plain text files that users can create or receive from others. The defect is a CWE-190 integer overflow/truncation in the WritableDict::add() routine of modules/speller/default/writable.cpp, part of the default speller module. When a word read from a personal wordlist is stored, its length is held in a single byte, so any length that is an exact multiple of 256 wraps to a truncated value (for example 256 becomes 0 or 256 becomes 0 mod 256). The buffer allocated for that word is therefore smaller than the data copied into it, producing heap corruption and a crash of the aspell process. The vulnerability class is a classic length-truncation leading to a heap overflow; it is not a parser memory-safety bug in a network protocol, and there is no remote or default-configuration exposure. The CPE entry cpe:2.3:a:gnu:aspell:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* indicates the whole Aspell product line is in scope up to the fixed release, and the issue was reported through CERT-PL with the vendor advisory hosted at aspell.net.
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Severity by source
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N
Local vector and required user interaction to load a crafted wordlist (AV:L/UI:R), high complexity for the 256-multiple length condition (AC:H), no auth (PR:N), availability-only DoS impact (A:L).
Primary rating from Vendor (CERT-PL).
CVSS VectorVendor: CERT-PL
Lifecycle Timeline
1DescriptionCVE.org
GNU Aspell contains an integer truncation vulnerability in the WritableDict::add() function in modules/speller/default/writable.cpp. When loading a personal wordlist, the word length is stored as a single byte, causing truncation for words whose length is a multiple of 256. This leads to heap corruption. An attacker can exploit this by convincing a user to run aspell with a crafted personal wordlist containing such a word, resulting in denial of service.
This issue was fixed in commit 782ce94e4dc71eaec4ee1bd945eb3b9c47c5387d which will be released in version 0.60.8.3.
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Integer overflow occurs when an arithmetic operation produces a result that exceeds the maximum value a given integer type can store.
Denial of Service attacks render applications or systems unavailable by overwhelming resources or triggering failure conditions.
libaspell.a in GNU Aspell before 0.60.8 has a stack-based buffer over-read in acommon::unescape in common/getdata.cpp vi
Loading an attacker-supplied read-only dictionary (.rws) file in GNU Aspell through 0.60.8.2 can corrupt heap memory, yi
Heap out-of-bounds read in GNU Aspell's binary dictionary loader (ReadOnlyDict::load() in readonly_ws.cpp) lets a crafte
GNU Aspell's prezip-bin decompressor suffers a heap-based buffer overflow (CWE-122) that lets a crafted prezip-compresse
EUVD-2026-93366
GHSA-7gjr-5wh9-g7w9
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
VulDB
Exploit-DB