CVE-2026-35338

Summary

A vulnerability in the chmod utility of uutils coreutils allows users to bypass the –preserve-root safety mechanism. The implementation only validates if the target path is literally / and does not canonicalize the path. An attacker or accidental user can use path variants such as /../ or symbolic links to execute destructive recursive operations (e.g., chmod -R 000) on the entire root filesystem, leading to system-wide permission loss and potential complete system breakdown.

Affected Software

VendorProductVersion RangeStatus
Uutilscoreutils0 < 0.6.0affected

Weaknesses

  • CWE-22: CWE-22: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal')

ADP Enrichment

CISA ADP Vulnrichment

  • SSVC:
  • Exploitation: none
    • Automatable: no
    • Technical Impact: total

References