Red Hat admin backend of gvfs: race condition
A flaw was found in the admin backend of gvfs. The privileged gvfsd-admin daemon changes the ownership of newly created private D-Bus sockets by calling the link-following chown() function on a pathname inside a user-controlled directory. A local attacker can exploit this via a Time-of-Check Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) race condition and exchange the socket pathname with a symbolic link pointing to an arbitrary root-owned file (such as /etc/pam.d/su). The daemon subsequently follows the symlink and changes the ownership of the targeted root-owned file to the attacker's user ID. This allows an authenticated local attacker to modify critical system files, leading to a full local privilege escalation to root.
Affected versions
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Product | all versions | No fix yet |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Product | all versions | No fix yet |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Product | all versions | No fix yet |
| gvfs Product | >= 1.48.1, < 1.62.0 | 1.62.0 |
| >= 1.48.1, < 1.60.3 | 1.60.3 | |
| >= 1.48.1, < 1.58.5 | 1.58.5 |
Details and references
- CVSS 3.1
- CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Severity from
- the vendor (its own CVE record or advisory)
- Weakness
- CWE-367
- www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-88924
- nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-88924
- access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:73998
- access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:74370
- access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:85939
- access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:85941
- access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:85942
- access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:85944
- access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-88924
- bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2531456
- gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gvfs/-/issues/875