CVE-2026-91203 is a vulnerability in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Published on September 18, 2026
Cockpit-files: cockpit-files: arbitrary file ownership and permission modification via symlink race condition
A flaw was found in cockpit-files. This vulnerability allows a local attacker to exploit a timing issue, known as a symlink race condition, during privileged file operations such as changing file ownership or permissions. By manipulating directory entries and winning this race, the attacker can redirect these operations to unintended files. This could lead to unauthorized changes in file ownership and permissions on arbitrary files, potentially compromising system integrity and availability by altering system or application states or rendering services unusable.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2026-91203 can be exploited with local system access, requires user interaction and a small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is consided to have a high level of 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 availability.
Timeline
Reported to Red Hat.
Made public. 137 days later.
Weakness Type
Race Condition Enabling Link Following
The software checks the status of a file or directory before accessing it, which produces a race condition in which the file can be replaced with a link before the access is performed, causing the software to access the wrong file. While developers might expect that there is a very narrow time window between the time of check and time of use, there is still a race condition. An attacker could cause the software to slow down (e.g. with memory consumption), causing the time window to become larger. Alternately, in some situations, the attacker could win the race by performing a large number of attacks.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-91203
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