Privilege escalation in FreeBSD

CVE-2026-45254

In the case of the cap_net service, when a key present in the old limit was omitted from the new limit, the missing key was treated as "allow any" instead of being rejected. In certain scenarios, an application that had previously restricted a subset of network operations could ask for a new limit that extended the permissions of the process.

Vulnerability class: Privilege Escalation

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.003 (18.9th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 19th percentile — 18.9% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-45254: held from 0.002 to 0.003.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.003 · change: +0.001

Affected products

  • FreeBSD — versions 14.3, 15.0, 14.4-RELEASE

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-45254?
CVE-2026-45254 is a medium-severity vulnerability in FreeBSD, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2026-05-21.
How severe is CVE-2026-45254?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.