Medium severity · published Sep 22, 2026
CVE-2026-86805
AT_SECURE programs may load attacker-controlled code via $ORIGIN
6.3
CVSS
0.1%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
A time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition in the dynamic loader (ld.so) of the GNU C Library (glibc) versions 2.14 through 2.44 allows a local attacker to escalate privileges. When expanding $ORIGIN in DT_RPATH for setuid/setgid (AT_SECURE) programs, glibc validates the lexically normalized search path against the trusted directories but then opens the raw, un-normalized path. On systems where the Linux fs.protected_hardlinks sysctl is disabled, a local attacker who hard-links such a program into an attacker-controlled directory and wins a race to replace an intermediate path component with a symbolic link can direct the loader outside the trusted directory, causing it to load an attacker-controlled shared object and execute arbitrary code with the elevated privileges of the program.
Exploitation requires an installed setuid or setgid binary whose DT_RPATH uses $ORIGIN followed by ".." traversal that normalizes into a trusted directory, and the ability to hard-link that binary and win the race by swapping a path component for a symbolic link. Major Linux-based OS distributions ship with fs.protected_hardlinks enabled by default and mitigate the vulnerability.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:L
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
High
Privileges
Low
User interaction
Required
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
Low
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.1% · higher than 1% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
GL
glibc · The GNU C Library
2.14 before 2.45 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-86805
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-86805
sourceware.org
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=34360
sourceware.org
https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob_plain;f=advisories/GLIBC-SA-2026-0022
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