CVE-2026-49237 Local Privilege Escalation in Canonical Multipass
Local attackers can escalate privileges to root by replacing writable auxiliary binaries invoked by the root daemon in Canonical Multipass for macOS.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2026-49237?
CVE-2026-49237 is a high-severity vulnerability in Canonical Multipass, published on 28 May 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
An issue was discovered in Canonical Multipass for macOS before version 1.16.3 due to an incomplete fix for CVE-2025-5199. While the patch in version 1.16.0 updated the ownership of the multipassd daemon binary to root:wheel, five co-located binaries (multipass, qemu-img, qemu-system-aarch64, qemu-system-x86_64, and sshfs_server) in /Library/Application Support/com.canonical.multipass/bin/ retain ownership by the installing user and remain writable. Because the root LaunchDaemon (com.canonical.multipassd.plist) configures a PATH environment variable that prioritizes this user-writable directory and invokes these auxiliary binaries by their bare names, a local attacker can replace an auxiliary binary (such as qemu-img) with a malicious wrapper. When the root daemon subsequently triggers the binary during routine execution (e.g., via multipass launch), the malicious code executes with root privileges, leading to local privilege escalation.
Weakness: CWE-276
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-49237?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Canonical Multipass.
How do I fix CVE-2026-49237?
No fix has been published for CVE-2026-49237 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Is CVE-2026-49237 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-49237 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Canonical Multipass
Sources
Also known as GHSA-r2xg-x32f-23c5.