CVE-2026-19079 MEDIUM

CVE-2026-19079: Policycoreutils: policycoreutils: toctou race condition in fixfiles allows arbitrary selinux label manipulation

Vendor Red Hat
Product Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
Weakness CWE-367
Published August 7, 2026
Last update August 7, 2026

CVSS base score

4.4/10
Attack vector Local
Attack complexity High
Privileges required Low
User interaction Required
Confidentiality None
Integrity High

CVSS vector

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

What the vulnerability does

01Description

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.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

August 7, 2026 CVE published
August 7, 2026 Record updated