Heap Use-After-Free Vulnerability in TeX Live's SyncTeX Parser Affects GNOME Evince

CVE-2026-63729

What is CVE-2026-63729?

The SyncTeX parser included with TeX Live and utilized by applications like GNOME Evince is susceptible to a heap use-after-free vulnerability. This issue arises when an attacker provides a malformed .synctex or .synctex.gz file, which leads to the construction of a reference node with a NULL parent pointer. Consequently, this situation disrupts the detachment process of the node from its sibling chain, leading to recursive freeing of active tree nodes. The resultant dangling pointers can be accessed by the parser, resulting in potential application crashes or arbitrary code execution during the document loading process, posing significant security risks.

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