Medium [CVE-2026-19542] Fix out-of-bounds array write in tdelete

Calling tdelete on a sufficiently deep tree in the GNU C Library version 2.1 to 2.44 may write one pointer past the end of an alloca-allocated array on the stack, which may crash the application. The tdelete implementation keeps an explicit stack of parent nodes for rebalancing, which is grown as needed while descending the tree.

Two rebalancing branches push an additional entry without checking the capacity, and write past the array when the stack is exactly full.

Triggering this requires a node at a depth of exactly 40 (or 40 plus a multiple of 20), which implies a tree with at least a million nodes, so an attacker must drive a large number of insertions and deletions through an application that uses tsearch and tdelete. The written value is a pointer into a tree node and is not directly attacker controlled.

No affected application in common distributions has been identified. A flaw was found in glibc.

An out-of-bounds array write vulnerability exists within the `tdelete` function. This issue occurs due to incorrect management of array sizes, which can lead to memory corruption.

A local attacker with low privileges could potentially exploit this to cause a denial of service or disclose sensitive information.

Affected products named by the advisory: Red Hat Hardened Images; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7; and 5 more.