CVE-2026-88924 Gvfs: gvfs-admin socket ownership race permits local root
A local attacker can exploit a race condition in gvfs-admin to change ownership of root-owned files, achieving full privilege escalation to root.
- 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-2026-88924?
CVE-2026-88924 is a high-severity vulnerability in GNOME Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, published on 10 Sep 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
A flaw was found in the admin backend of gvfs. The privileged gvfsd-admin daemon changes the ownership of newly created private D-Bus sockets by calling the link-following chown() function on a pathname inside a user-controlled directory. A local attacker can exploit this via a Time-of-Check Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) race condition and exchange the socket pathname with a symbolic link pointing to an arbitrary root-owned file (such as /etc/pam.d/su). The daemon subsequently follows the symlink and changes the ownership of the targeted root-owned file to the attacker's user ID. This allows an authenticated local attacker to modify critical system files, leading to a full local privilege escalation to root.
Weakness: CWE-367
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-88924?
How do I fix CVE-2026-88924?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2026-88924 being exploited?
It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2026-88924 exists.
Sources
Also known as CLSA-2026-1792166468, CLSA-2026-1792212029, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-88924, GHSA-8w8m-36rw-gg63, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-88924.