published October 6, 2026
GNU Aspell contains an out-of-bounds read vulnerability in ReadOnlyDict::load() in readonly_ws.cpp. When loading a binary .rws dictionary file, it uses offset fields from the file header as byte indices into a heap buffer without validating their bounds. An attacker can trigger this by convincing a user to run aspell with a crafted dictionary file supplied through --master, --dict-dir, or configuration options, leading to heap memory disclosure or a denial of service via application crash.
This issue was fixed in commit 941953b25031bc9104e83f58e138a664b8dedc3f which will be released in version 0.60.8.3.