2.8Low

CVE-2026-64846

Nix is a package manager for Linux and other Unix systems. Prior to 2.35.0, a malicious derivation executed with the recursive-nix experimental feature can exploit a time-of-check/time-of-use race involving final symlink handling in the LocalStore restore path. The race can cause writeFile to follow a substituted final symlink when opening a path with O_TRUNC instead of enforcing FinalSymlink::DontFollow, allowing the Nix process or nix-daemon to create or truncate an empty file outside the build sandbox with the daemon user's permissions. The primitive does not provide arbitrary-content writes and requires winning the race. This issue is fixed in version 2.35.0.

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 less than 0.1% chance of attack attempts being seen in the next 30 days, ranking above 0% of all known flaws.

What to do

  1. 1Ask your IT team or provider whether any of your systems use the affected product.
  2. 2If you do, follow the vendor's guidance. No patch reference has been published yet.

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Scoring

CVSS
2.8 (v3.1)
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N
Weakness
CWE-61
Assigned by
security-advisories@github.com

Dates

Published
2026-08-20
Last modified
2026-09-18
Sources
NVD

References