What is CVE-2026-26157?

CVE-2026-26157 is a high-severity vulnerability in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, classified under External Control of File Name or Path. CVSS score: 7.0/10. Published 2026-02-11.

How severe is CVE-2026-26157?

High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.0 out of 10.

Vulnerability in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

CVE-2026-26157

A flaw was found in BusyBox. Incomplete path sanitization in its archive extraction utilities allows an attacker to craft malicious archives that when extracted, and under specific conditions, may write to files outside the intended directory. This can lead to arbitrary file overwrite, potentially enabling code execution through the modification of sensitive system files.

Published 2026-02-11 · last modified 2026-07-15.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.0 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.006 (46.7th percentile), scored 2026-09-29.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 47th percentile — 46.7% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.007 · newest: 0.006 · change: -0.001

Affected products

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Red Hat Hardened Images — versions 1.37.0-7.2.hum1

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-73 — External Control of File Name or Path

References

access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-26157 (vdb-entry)
bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi (issue-tracking)
git.busybox.net/busybox/commit/archival
access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:13831 (vendor-advisory)
0b142b55-0307-4c5a-b3c9-f314f3fb7c5e
0b0ca135-0b70-47e7-9f44-1890c2a1c46c

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-26157?: CVE-2026-26157 is a high-severity vulnerability in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, classified under External Control of File Name or Path. CVSS score: 7.0/10. Published 2026-02-11.
How severe is CVE-2026-26157?: High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.0 out of 10.