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.

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)

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.

Affected products

Canonical Accountsservice

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-78 — OS Command Injection

References

security@ubuntu.com (issue-tracking)
security@ubuntu.com (vendor-advisory)

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.