CVE-2026-5398
A malicious process can abuse the dangling pointer to grant itself root privileges.
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.21%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
The implementation of TIOCNOTTY failed to clear a back-pointer from the structure representing the controlling terminal to the calling process' session. If the invoking process then exits, the terminal structure may end up containing a pointer to freed memory. A malicious process can abuse the dangling pointer to grant itself root privileges.
- CVSS 3.1
- 8.4 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- EPSS
- 0.21% probability · 11th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-416
- Affected
- freebsd/freebsd
- Source
- secteam@freebsd.org
EPSS 0.2% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
References
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.