CVE-2026-12505 HIGH

CVE-2026-12505: Cifs-utils: local privilege escalation via forged cifs.spnego key description in cifs.upcall

Vendor Red Hat
Product Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Weakness CWE-250
Published June 18, 2026
Last update June 30, 2026

CVSS base score

7.8/10
Attack vector Local
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required Low
User interaction None
Confidentiality High
Integrity High

CVSS vector

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

What the vulnerability does

01Description

A flaw was found in the cifs-utils package where the cifs.upcall helper fails to securely drop its root privileges before looking up user information inside a user-controlled environment. A local, low privileged attacker can exploit this by using a crafted request_key payload to trick the root-owned helper into entering a custom environment (namespace) containing a malicious NSS module. This forces the system to load the attacker's controlled NSS Module and configuration, allowing them to execute arbitrary commands as the root user, elevating their privileges and fully compromising the system.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

June 18, 2026 CVE published
June 30, 2026 Record updated