Policycoreutils: policycoreutils: toctou race condition in fixfiles allows arbitrary selinux label manipulation
Summary
| CVE | CVE-2026-19079 |
|---|---|
| State | PUBLISHED |
| Assigner | redhat |
| Source Priority | CVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback |
| Published | 2026-08-07 08:16:46 UTC |
| Updated | 2026-08-21 13:16:56 UTC |
| Description | A TOCTOU (Time-of-Check-Time-of-Use) race condition vulnerability was found in the fixfiles script in policycoreutils. When running fixfiles relabel or fixfiles restore, the script used find and chcon commands to locate and relabel unlabeled files under /tmp and other directories. A local attacker could exploit a race window between the file discovery and the label change operation by swapping directory components with symlinks, causing chcon to follow the symlink and modify SELinux labels on arbitrary system files. This could undermine SELinux mandatory access control protections on critical files such as /etc/shadow. |
Risk And Classification
Primary CVSS: v3.1 4.4 MEDIUM from [email protected]
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
EPSS: 0.000820000 probability, percentile 0.002650000 (date 2026-08-21)
Problem Types: CWE-367 | CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition
| Version | Source | Type | Score | Severity | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | [email protected] | Secondary | 4.4 | MEDIUM | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N |
| 3.1 | CNA | CVSS | 4.4 | MEDIUM | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N |
CVSS v3.1 Breakdown
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Vendor Declared Affected Products
| Source | Vendor | Product | Version | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CNA | Red Hat | Red Hat Hardened Images | unaffected 3.11-2.2.hum1 * rpm | Not specified |
| CNA | Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | Not specified | Not specified |
| CNA | Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | Not specified | Not specified |
| CNA | Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | Not specified | Not specified |
| CNA | Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | Not specified | Not specified |
| CNA | Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | Not specified | Not specified |
| CNA | Red Hat | Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 | Not specified | Not specified |
References
| Reference | Source | Link | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| github.com/SELinuxProject/selinux/commit/a556538c2d5d2583273e025b45c0265... | [email protected] | github.com | |
| access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-19079 | [email protected] | access.redhat.com | |
| access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:51861 | [email protected] | access.redhat.com | |
| bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi | [email protected] | bugzilla.redhat.com | |
| CVE Program record | CVE.ORG | www.cve.org | canonical |
| NVD vulnerability detail | NVD | nvd.nist.gov | canonical, analysis |
Vendor Comments And Credit
Discovery Credit
CNA: Upstream acknowledges Stephen Smalley as the original reporter. (en)
Additional Advisory Data
| Source | Time | Event |
|---|---|---|
| CNA | 2026-07-08T00:00:00.000Z | Reported to Red Hat. |
| CNA | 2026-07-08T00:00:00.000Z | Made public. |
Workarounds
CNA: As a workaround, use 'restorecon -R /' directly instead of 'fixfiles relabel' or 'fixfiles restore' to perform filesystem relabeling. This avoids the vulnerable /tmp-specific find+chcon code path entirely. Note that this skips the /tmp cleanup logic, but on modern systems where /tmp is mounted as tmpfs, this cleanup is unnecessary as tmpfs cannot retain files from a prior boot.