Linux Kernel AppArmor Local User Can Acquire Policy Management
CVE-2026-23268 Published on March 18, 2026
apparmor: fix unprivileged local user can do privileged policy management
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
apparmor: fix unprivileged local user can do privileged policy management
An unprivileged local user can load, replace, and remove profiles by
opening the apparmorfs interfaces, via a confused deputy attack, by
passing the opened fd to a privileged process, and getting the
privileged process to write to the interface.
This does require a privileged target that can be manipulated to do
the write for the unprivileged process, but once such access is
achieved full policy management is possible and all the possible
implications that implies: removing confinement, DoS of system or
target applications by denying all execution, by-passing the
unprivileged user namespace restriction, to exploiting kernel bugs for
a local privilege escalation.
The policy management interface can not have its permissions simply
changed from 0666 to 0600 because non-root processes need to be able
to load policy to different policy namespaces.
Instead ensure the task writing the interface has privileges that
are a subset of the task that opened the interface. This is already
done via policy for confined processes, but unconfined can delegate
access to the opened fd, by-passing the usual policy check.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-23268
Want to know whenever a new CVE is published for Linux Kernel? stack.watch will email you.
Affected Versions
Linux:- Version b7fd2c0340eacbee892425e9007647568b7f2a3c and below 0fc63dd9170643d15c25681fca792539e23f4640 is affected.
- Version b7fd2c0340eacbee892425e9007647568b7f2a3c and below b60b3f7a35c46b2e0ca934f9c988b8fca06d76c6 is affected.
- Version b7fd2c0340eacbee892425e9007647568b7f2a3c and below b6a94eeca9c6c8f7c55ad44c62c98324f51ec596 is affected.
- Version b7fd2c0340eacbee892425e9007647568b7f2a3c and below 6601e13e82841879406bf9f369032656f441a425 is affected.
- Version 4.11 is affected.
- Before 4.11 is unaffected.
- Version 6.12.77, <= 6.12.* is unaffected.
- Version 6.18.18, <= 6.18.* is unaffected.
- Version 6.19.8, <= 6.19.* is unaffected.
- Version 7.0-rc4, <= * is unaffected.
Exploit Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.