BusyBox Mount Bypass via Clearing-Mask Options
CVE-2026-88838 Published on October 13, 2026
Busybox: busybox: non-root mount option filter bypass allows clearing fstab security restrictions
A flaw was found in BusyBox's mount utility. A non-root user can bypass mount security restrictions set in /etc/fstab by specifying clearing-mask options on the command line. These options pass the non-root flag filter and are merged with fstab options as strings; when the combined options are re-parsed, clearing options can override nosuid, nodev, and noexec protections the administrator intended to enforce.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2026-88838 is exploitable with local system access, and requires small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have no impact on confidentiality, a high impact on integrity, and no impact on availability.
Timeline
Reported to Red Hat.
Made public. 34 days later.
Weakness Type
Protection Mechanism Failure
The product does not use or incorrectly uses a protection mechanism that provides sufficient defense against directed attacks against the product. This weakness covers three distinct situations. A "missing" protection mechanism occurs when the application does not define any mechanism against a certain class of attack. An "insufficient" protection mechanism might provide some defenses - for example, against the most common attacks - but it does not protect against everything that is intended. Finally, an "ignored" mechanism occurs when a mechanism is available and in active use within the product, but the developer has not applied it in some code path.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-88838
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