A double-free condition exists in contrib/shpsort.c of shapelib 1.5.0 and older releases. This issue may allow an attacker to cause a denial of service or have other unspecified impact via control over malloc.
Weakness
The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory “belongs” to the code that operates on the new pointer.
Affected Software
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shapelib | Osgeo | * | 1.5.0 (including) |
| Shapelib | Ubuntu | bionic | * |
| Shapelib | Ubuntu | focal | * |
| Shapelib | Ubuntu | kinetic | * |
| Shapelib | Ubuntu | lunar | * |
| Shapelib | Ubuntu | trusty | * |
| Shapelib | Ubuntu | upstream | * |
| Shapelib | Ubuntu | xenial | * |
Potential Mitigations
References
- https://github.com/OSGeo/shapelib/commit/c75b9281a5b9452d92e1682bdfe6019a13ed819f
- https://github.com/OSGeo/shapelib/issues/39
- https://github.com/OSGeo/shapelib/commit/c75b9281a5b9452d92e1682bdfe6019a13ed819f
- https://github.com/OSGeo/shapelib/issues/39
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2026/01/msg00023.html