VulnerabilityAwaiting Analysis
CVE-2026-61897
A shell spawned by a helper script inherits ruid=0 and may reset its effective UID to root, enabling local privilege escalation.
HIGH 7.8EPSS 0.10%
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.10%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
An Ubuntu-specific patch to AccountsService before 23.13.9-8ubuntu7 only partially drops privileges before launching language helper scripts. It changes the effective UID/GID to the target user but leaves the real UID as 0 (root). A shell spawned by a helper script inherits ruid=0 and may reset its effective UID to root, enabling local privilege escalation.
- CVSS 3.1
- 7.8 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- EPSS
- 0.10% probability · 1th percentile
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-273
- Source
- security@ubuntu.com
References
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.