CVE-2026-91205 is a vulnerability in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Published on September 18, 2026
Cockpit-files: cockpit-files: local attacker can hijack file ownership via symlink race
A flaw was found in cockpit-files. A local unprivileged attacker can exploit a race condition during directory creation with owner assignment. By controlling a writable parent directory, the attacker can replace a newly created directory with a symbolic link (symlink) before the ownership change operation (chown) is applied. This allows the attacker to redirect the ownership change to an arbitrary file, potentially leading to information disclosure or unauthorized modification of sensitive files.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2026-91205 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 a high impact on confidentiality and integrity, and no impact on 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-2026-91205
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