CVE-2026-16445

Summary

A flaw was found in dracut. A remote attacker on the adjacent network can exploit this vulnerability by providing specially crafted DHCP options, such as a malicious root-path, next-server, or bootfile name, to a system using dracut's NetworkManager-based initrd network module. These options are improperly handled and written into a temporary shell script without proper escaping, leading to command injection. This allows the attacker to achieve root code execution within the initramfs during system boot.

Affected Software

VendorProductVersion RangeStatus
Red HatRed Hat Enterprise Linux 80:049-244.git20260529.el8_10 < *unaffected

Weaknesses

  • CWE-78: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection')

Workarounds

Escape DHCP-derived values (root-path, next-server, dhcp-bootfile) with shell-safe quoting (for example printf '%q') before writing them to the generated dhcpopts file in modules.d/35network-manager/nm-run.sh. This approach is already used in dracut-057 and later, and is already present in the RHEL 8.10.z dracut-049-244.git20260529.el8_10 build.

References