Vulnerability in GNOME Gvfs

CVE-2026-88924

A flaw was found in the admin backend of gvfs. The privileged gvfsd-admin daemon changes the ownership of newly created private D-Bus sockets by calling the link-following chown() function on a pathname inside a user-controlled directory. A local attacker can exploit this via a Time-of-Check Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) race condition and exchange the socket pathname with a symbolic link pointing to an arbitrary root-owned file (such as /etc/pam.d/su). The daemon subsequently follows the symlink and changes the ownership of the targeted root-owned file to the attacker's user ID. This allows an authenticated local attacker to modify critical system files, leading to a full local privilege escalation to root.

Vulnerability class: TOCTOU (Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use)

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

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

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (12.7th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 13th percentile — 12.7% 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-2026-88924: 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-2026-88924?
CVE-2026-88924 is a high-severity vulnerability in GNOME Gvfs, classified under Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition. CVSS score: 7.0/10. Published 2026-09-10.
How severe is CVE-2026-88924?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.0 out of 10.