CVE-2026-79655 Path traversal in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
A local attacker can exploit path traversal in sos clean to write arbitrary files as root, leading to privilege escalation.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- A user has to click or open something
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-79655?
CVE-2026-79655 is a high-severity path traversal vulnerability in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, published on 25 Aug 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Official description
A flaw was found in sos clean, a utility within the sos package. This vulnerability allows a local attacker to perform arbitrary file creation or overwrite. By crafting a malicious tar archive, an attacker can exploit a path traversal issue during tar extraction, where symlink and hardlink targets are not properly validated. This enables the attacker to write files to arbitrary locations on the system with the privileges of the sos clean process, which often runs as root.
Weakness: CWE-59
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-79655?
How do I fix CVE-2026-79655?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, and resolve every user-supplied path against an allowed base folder before opening it. More about Path traversal.
Is CVE-2026-79655 being exploited?
It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2026-79655 exists.
Sources
Also known as AZL-98211, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-79655, GHSA-jhqm-m4j3-wqq2, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-79655.