Out-of-bounds read in PCRE2 - CVE-2026-89156

Vulnerability identifier: #VU146523

CSH Severity: Low

CVSS v4: 2 [CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]

CVE-ID: CVE-2026-89156

CWE-ID: CWE-125

Exploitation vector: Local access

Exploit availability: No public exploit available

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to cause a denial of service.

The vulnerability exists due to out-of-bounds read in pcre2_match() when processing invalid UTF subjects after JIT fallback to the interpreter. A remote attacker can pass a specially crafted invalid UTF subject to cause a denial of service.

Exploitation requires UTF matching, JIT support, a non-zero starting offset, and a pattern with lookbehind in the 8-bit library.

PCRE2
Anolis OS
pcre2
pcre2-devel
pcre2-static
pcre2-tools
pcre2-utf16
pcre2-utf32
pcre2-syntax

Install security update from vendor's website.

PCRE2 - update to 10.48
pcre2 - update to 10.42-7
pcre2-devel - update to 10.42-7
pcre2-static - update to 10.42-7
pcre2-tools - update to 10.42-7
pcre2-utf16 - update to 10.42-7
pcre2-utf32 - update to 10.42-7
pcre2-syntax - update to 10.42-7

• https://github.com/PCRE2Project/pcre2/security/advisories/GHSA-2p8c-ff85-vh9x
• https://github.com/PCRE2Project/pcre2/commit/f67db227af31bba7cdf2a7a00b97af91b588c2f5

• Multiple vulnerabilities in PCRE2
• Anolis OS update for pcre2