Vulnerability-Lookup

ALSA-2026:88421 (CVE-2026-12080)

Vulnerability from osv_almalinux – Published: 2026-10-22 00:00 – Updated: 2026-11-04 09:29 – Source website

Summary

Important: qemu-kvm security, bug fix, and enhancement update

Details

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on a variety of architectures. The qemu-kvm packages provide the user-space component for running virtual machines that use KVM.

Security Fix(es):

qemu-kvm: qemu-guest-agent: Local privilege escalation via symlink attack in guest-ssh-add-authorized-keys (CVE-2026-12080)

Bug Fix(es) and Enhancement(s):

qemu-img can't create a qcow2 overlay with 'data_file' feature on top of a file without destroying the original image [almalinux-9.8.z] (JIRA:AlmaLinux-164549)
live migration of a VM with a scsi3pr to a node that previously held a reservation on that disk fails. [almalinux-9.8.z] (JIRA:AlmaLinux-280223)
Fix pending QEMU issues for L1VH GA - QEMU [almalinux-9.8.z] (JIRA:AlmaLinux-283121)

For more details about the security issue(s), including the impact, a CVSS score, acknowledgments, and other related information, refer to the CVE page(s) listed in the References section.

References

URL

Type

	https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:88421	ADVISORY
	https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-12080	REPORT
	https://bugzilla.redhat.com/2499603	REPORT
	https://errata.almalinux.org/9/ALSA-2026-88421.html	ADVISORY

JSON

To clipboard

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  "details": "Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on a variety of architectures. The qemu-kvm packages provide the user-space component for running virtual machines that use KVM.  \n\nSecurity Fix(es):  \n\n  * qemu-kvm: qemu-guest-agent: Local privilege escalation via symlink attack in guest-ssh-add-authorized-keys (CVE-2026-12080)\n\n\nBug Fix(es) and Enhancement(s):  \n\n  * qemu-img can\u0027t create a qcow2 overlay with \u0027data_file\u0027 feature on top of a file without destroying the original image [almalinux-9.8.z] (JIRA:AlmaLinux-164549)\n  * live migration of a VM with a scsi3pr to a node that previously held a reservation on that disk fails. [almalinux-9.8.z] (JIRA:AlmaLinux-280223)\n  * Fix pending QEMU issues for L1VH GA - QEMU [almalinux-9.8.z] (JIRA:AlmaLinux-283121)\n\n\nFor more details about the security issue(s), including the impact, a CVSS score, acknowledgments, and other related information, refer to the CVE page(s) listed in the References section.\n",
  "id": "ALSA-2026:88421",
  "modified": "2026-11-04T09:29:20Z",
  "published": "2026-10-22T00:00:00Z",
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}

CVE-2026-12080 (GCVE-0-2026-12080)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-07-20 12:40 – Updated: 2026-11-04 22:03

Title

Qemu-kvm: qemu-guest-agent: local privilege escalation via symlink attack in guest-ssh-add-authorized-keys

Summary

A flaw was found in the QEMU Guest Agent (qga). A local unprivileged user can exploit a vulnerability in the guest-ssh-add-authorized-keys command handler by manipulating symbolic links. This can occur either through a deterministic directory-symlink bypass or a Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) file-symlink race. Successful exploitation allows the attacker to gain ownership of arbitrary root-owned files or directories, leading to root access. This vulnerability requires an external management layer (e.g., libvirt) to trigger the affected code path.

Severity

7.3 (High)


                        
                          CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

SSVC

Exploitation: none Automatable: no Technical Impact: total

CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)

Decision recorded 2026-07-20 18:03 UTC

CWE

CWE-61 - UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following

Assigner

redhat CNA under the redhat root

CNA scorecard B 82/100 over 1088 records in the last 180 days details

References

4 references

URL	Tags
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:88421	vendor-advisoryx_refsource_REDHAT
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-12080	vdb-entryx_refsource_REDHAT
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2499603	issue-trackingx_refsource_REDHAT
https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/work_items/3929

Impacted products

8 products

Vendor	Product	Version
Red Hat	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9	Unaffected: 17:10.1.0-17.el9_8.9 , < * (rpm) cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:9::appstream
Red Hat	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10	cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:10
Red Hat	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6	cpe:/o:redhat:rhel_els:6
Red Hat	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7	cpe:/o:redhat:rhel_els:7
Red Hat	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:8
Red Hat	Red Hat Enterprise Linux for NVIDIA 26	cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux_nvidia:
Red Hat	Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4	cpe:/a:redhat:openshift:4
Red Hat	Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5	cpe:/a:redhat:openshift:5

Date Public

2026-07-09 10:57

Credits

Red Hat would like to thank Valentino Paulon for reporting this issue.

Show details on NVD website

JSON

To clipboard

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Sightings

Author	Source	Type	Date	Other

Nomenclature

Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.

Vulnerability timeline

Sightings and recorded dates, grouped by day · UTC

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The MITRE ATT&CK techniques below are AI-generated suggestions, inferred from the description of the vulnerability by the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-classification-roberta-base model, served locally by ML-Gateway. They have not been verified by an analyst and are provided for guidance only.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.

Related by attack behaviour

Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.

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