CVE-2026-61898 accountsservice: shell injection via attacker-controlled ~/.pam_environment in Ubuntu language helper scripts
Attackers can execute arbitrary shell commands with root privileges by injecting malicious input into the LANGUAGE variable in ~/.pam_environment via D-Bus.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-61898?
CVE-2026-61898 is a high-severity command injection vulnerability in Canonical accountsservice, published on 20 Aug 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
The Ubuntu-specific language helper scripts (save-to-pam-env, update-langlist) shipped with accountsservice before 23.13.9-8ubuntu7 treat the user-controlled LANGUAGE entry in ~/.pam_environment as trusted input. The value is interpolated unescaped into a GNU sed replacement expression, allowing an attacker to inject a sed 'e' flag and arbitrary shell commands that execute with the privileges of the AccountsService helper process (real UID 0) via the SetLanguage D-Bus method.
Weakness: CWE-78
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-61898?
How do I fix CVE-2026-61898?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, and pass arguments to programs as a list instead of through a shell. More about Command injection.
Is CVE-2026-61898 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-61898 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-vqj6-342m-9cvg, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-61898.