CVE-2026-12505
A flaw was found in the cifs-utils package where the cifs.upcall helper fails to securely drop its root privileges before looking up user information inside a user-controlled environment. A local, low privileged attacker can exploit this by using a crafted request_key payload to trick the root-owned helper into entering a custom environment (namespace) containing a malicious NSS module. This forces the system to load the attacker's controlled NSS Module and configuration, allowing them to execute arbitrary commands as the root user, elevating their privileges and fully compromising the system.
What this means for your business
- An attacker can use it only with access to the machine itself, with an ordinary user login, and without anyone at your company clicking anything.
- FIRST's prediction model gives it a 0.2% chance of attack attempts being seen in the next 30 days, ranking above 5% of all known flaws.
What to do
- 1Ask your IT team or provider whether any of your systems use the affected product.
- 2If you do, follow the vendor's guidance. No patch reference has been published yet.
Not sure if your company is exposed?
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Scoring
- CVSS
- 7.8 (v3.1)
- Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H- Weakness
- CWE-250
- Assigned by
- secalert@redhat.com
Dates
- Published
- 2026-06-18
- Last modified
- 2026-08-31
- Sources
- NVD
References
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:32990
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:39575
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:39576
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:44232
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-12505
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2489805
- https://git.samba.org/?p=cifs-utils.git;a=commit;h=972c5b5ff95e3e812bc8daa72d0383654ab0dba7
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:32990
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:39575
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:39576
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:44232
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-12505
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2489805
- https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-12505.json