GitHub Advisoryadvisory · crates.io
GHSA-p6rv-2qpm-fwvg kill: 'kill -1' parsed as PID -1, sending SIGTERM to all processes (system crash / DoS)
MEDIUM
Official page ↗
- Aliases
- CVE-2026-35369
- Ecosystem
- crates.io
- Packages
- uu_kill
- Severity
- Moderate
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Weaknesses
- CWE-20, CWE-754
- Reviewed
- 2026-07-06
Affected packages
• crates.io uu_kill: < 0.6.0 → fixed in 0.6.0
Description
`kill -1` is incorrectly parsed as a positional `pid = -1`; combined with the default SIGTERM this calls `kill(-1, SIGTERM)`, signaling nearly every process the caller can see. GNU `kill` recognizes `-1`/`-9` as signals and reports "not enough arguments".
```
$ kill -1 # uutils: kill(-1, SIGTERM) -> mass termination / crash
$ kill -1 # GNU: kill: not enough arguments
```
Impact: a user running `kill -1` mass-terminates processes, potentially crashing the system. Recommendation: parse `-N` as a signal number, and error with "not enough arguments" when no PID is given.
Remediation: Acknowledged by Canonical; fixed in commit cae94028.
---
_Reported by Zellic in the *uutils coreutils Program Security Assessment* (prepared for Canonical, Jan 20 2026), audited commit `3a07ffc5a9bd4c283e75afa548ba1f1957bad242`. Finding 3.70. Credit: Zellic._
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2026-35369 An argument parsing error in the kill utility of uutils coreutils incorrectly interprets kill -1 as a request to send the default signal… vulnerability
References
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/security/advisories/GHSA-p6rv-2qpm-fwvg web
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-35369 advisory
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/pull/9700 web
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/commit/2d3aebce6712841bc08b9b94e9078be50a25fc10 web
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils package
- https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/releases/tag/0.6.0 web