CVE-2026-86805

NameCVE-2026-86805
DescriptionA time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition in the dynamic loader (ld.so) of the GNU C Library (glibc) versions 2.14 through 2.44 allows a local attacker to escalate privileges. When expanding $ORIGIN in DT_RPATH for setuid/setgid (AT_SECURE) programs, glibc validates the lexically normalized search path against the trusted directories but then opens the raw, un-normalized path. On systems where the Linux fs.protected_hardlinks sysctl is disabled, a local attacker who hard-links such a program into an attacker-controlled directory and wins a race to replace an intermediate path component with a symbolic link can direct the loader outside the trusted directory, causing it to load an attacker-controlled shared object and execute arbitrary code with the elevated privileges of the program. Exploitation requires an installed setuid or setgid binary whose DT_RPATH uses $ORIGIN followed by ".." traversal that normalizes into a trusted directory, and the ability to hard-link that binary and win the race by swapping a path component for a symbolic link. Major Linux-based OS distributions ship with fs.protected_hardlinks enabled by default and mitigate the vulnerability.
SourceCVE (at NVD; CERT, ENISA, LWN, oss-sec, fulldisc, Debian ELTS, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE bugzilla/CVE, GitHub advisories/code/issues, web search, more)
Debian Bugs1148727

Vulnerable and fixed packages

The table below lists information on source packages.

Source PackageReleaseVersionStatus
glibc (PTS)bookworm2.36-9+deb12u14vulnerable
bookworm (security)2.36-9+deb12u7vulnerable
trixie2.41-12+deb13u4vulnerable
forky, sid2.43-7fixed

The information below is based on the following data on fixed versions.

PackageTypeReleaseFixed VersionUrgencyOriginDebian Bugs
glibcsource(unstable)2.43-71148727

Notes

[trixie] - glibc <no-dsa> (Minor issue)
https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=advisories/GLIBC-SA-2026-0022
Fixed by: https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=commit;h=ed0c137b97eb940b4b64981e84ed806d3276edd9

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