CVE-2026-19079 (GCVE-0-2026-19079)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-08-07 07:21 – Updated: 2026-08-07 20:20
VLAI
Title
Policycoreutils: policycoreutils: toctou race condition in fixfiles allows arbitrary selinux label manipulation
Summary
A TOCTOU (Time-of-Check-Time-of-Use) race condition vulnerability was found in the fixfiles script in policycoreutils. When running fixfiles relabel or fixfiles restore, the script used find and chcon commands to locate and relabel unlabeled files under /tmp and other directories. A local attacker could exploit a race window between the file discovery and the label change operation by swapping directory components with symlinks, causing chcon to follow the symlink and modify SELinux labels on arbitrary system files. This could undermine SELinux mandatory access control protections on critical files such as /etc/shadow.
Severity
4.4 (Medium)
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
SSVC
Exploitation: none Automatable: no Technical Impact: partial
CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)
Decision recorded 2026-08-07 17:40 UTC
CWE
  • CWE-367 - Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition
Assigner
References
Impacted products
Date Public
2026-07-08 00:00
Credits
Upstream acknowledges Stephen Smalley as the original reporter.
Show details on NVD website
To clipboard 

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  • 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.
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  • 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.


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