CVE-2026-61897 (GCVE-0-2026-61897)
Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-08-20 14:32 – Updated: 2026-08-26 19:50
VLAI
EPSS
VEX
Title
accountsservice: incomplete privilege drop when running Ubuntu-specific language helper scripts
Summary
An Ubuntu-specific patch to AccountsService before 23.13.9-8ubuntu7 only partially drops privileges before launching language helper scripts. It changes the effective UID/GID to the target user but leaves the real UID as 0 (root). A shell spawned by a helper script inherits ruid=0 and may reset its effective UID to root, enabling local privilege escalation.
Severity
7.8 (High)
SSVC
Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical Impact: total
CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)
Decision recorded 2026-08-26 19:43 UTC
CWE
- CWE-273 - Improper Check for Dropped Privileges
Assigner
References
2 references
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/account… | issue-tracking |
| https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-61897 | vendor-advisory |
Impacted products
1 product
| Vendor | Product | Version | CPE status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canonical | accountsservice |
Affected:
22.07.5-2ubuntu1 , < 22.07.5-2ubuntu1.6
(dpkg)
Affected: 23.13.9-2ubuntu6 , < 23.13.9-2ubuntu6.1 (dpkg) Affected: 23.13.9-8ubuntu5 , < 23.13.9-8ubuntu5.2 (dpkg) Affected: 23.13.9-8ubuntu6 , < 23.13.9-8ubuntu7 (dpkg) |
guessed |
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Experimental. This forecast is provided for visualization only and may change without notice. Do not use it for operational decisions.
Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.
Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
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The MITRE ATT&CK techniques below are AI-generated suggestions, inferred from the description of the
vulnerability by the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-classification-roberta-base
model, served locally by ML-Gateway.
They have not been verified by an analyst and are provided for guidance only.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
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Related by attack behaviour
Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.
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