A flaw was found in the admin backend of gvfs. The privileged gvfsd-admin daemon changes the ownership of newly created private D-Bus sockets by calling the link-following chown() function on a pathname inside a user-controlled directory. A local attacker can exploit this via a Time-of-Check Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) race condition and exchange the socket pathname with a symbolic link pointing to an arbitrary root-owned file (such as /etc/pam.d/su). The daemon subsequently follows the symlink and changes the ownership of the targeted root-owned file to the attacker's user ID. This allows an authenticated local attacker to modify critical system files, leading to a full local privilege escalation to root.
Advisories

No advisories yet.

Fixes

Solution

No solution given by the vendor.


Workaround

To mitigate this issue, adjust Polkit rules to require password authentication to start gvfsd-admin or remove execute permissions of the gvfsd-admin binary to prevent execution.

History

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
References
Metrics threat_severity

None

threat_severity

Important


Thu, 10 Sep 2026 18:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'poc', 'Technical Impact': 'total'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}


Thu, 10 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Title Gvfs: gvfs admin socket ownership race permits local root Gvfs: gvfs-admin socket ownership race permits local root

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description A flaw was found in the admin backend of gvfs. The privileged gvfsd-admin daemon changes the ownership of newly created private D-Bus sockets by calling the link-following chown() function on a pathname inside a user-controlled directory. A local attacker can exploit this via a Time-of-Check Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) race condition and exchange the socket pathname with a symbolic link pointing to an arbitrary root-owned file (such as /etc/pam.d/su). The daemon subsequently follows the symlink and changes the ownership of the targeted root-owned file to the attacker's user ID. This allows an authenticated local attacker to modify critical system files, leading to a full local privilege escalation to root.
Title Gvfs: gvfs admin socket ownership race permits local root
First Time appeared Redhat
Redhat enterprise Linux
Weaknesses CWE-367
CPEs cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:10
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:9
Vendors & Products Redhat
Redhat enterprise Linux
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 7, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H'}


Projects

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: redhat

Published:

Updated: 2026-09-11T21:19:18.368Z

Reserved: 2026-09-10T14:04:13.603Z

Link: CVE-2026-88924

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2026-09-10T17:32:10.902Z

cve-icon NVD

Status : Awaiting Analysis

Published: 2026-09-10T15:17:59.253

Modified: 2026-09-11T22:16:45.760

Link: CVE-2026-88924

cve-icon Redhat

Severity : Important

Publid Date: 2026-09-09T00:00:00Z

Links: CVE-2026-88924 - Bugzilla

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-09-10T16:00:14Z

Weaknesses