RCE in Canonical Accountsservice

CVE-2026-61898

The Ubuntu-specific language helper scripts (save-to-pam-env, update-langlist) shipped with accountsservice before 23.13.9-8ubuntu7 treat the user-controlled LANGUAGE entry in ~/.pam_environment as trusted input. The value is interpolated unescaped into a GNU sed replacement expression, allowing an attacker to inject a sed 'e' flag and arbitrary shell commands that execute with the privileges of the AccountsService helper process (real UID 0) via the SetLanguage D-Bus method.

Vulnerability class: Command Injection (OS Command Injection)

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (7.6th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 8th percentile — 7.6% 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-2026-61898: held from 0.001 to 0.002.

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

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-61898?
CVE-2026-61898 is a high-severity vulnerability in Canonical Accountsservice, classified under OS Command Injection. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2026-08-20.
How severe is CVE-2026-61898?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.