CVE-2026-11837

high

Description

A local privilege escalation vulnerability was found in the ansible.posix authorized_key module. The module's keyfile() function uses os.chown() instead of os.lchown() and opens files without O_NOFOLLOW when managing SSH authorized keys. An unprivileged local user can pre-stage symbolic links in their ~/.ssh directory to redirect file ownership changes to arbitrary system paths when an operator runs the authorized_key task as root, leading to local privilege escalation.

References

https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-11837.json

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2487424

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-11837

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Published: 2026-06-10

Updated: 2026-06-30

Risk Information

CVSS v2

Base Score: 6.8

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C

Severity: Medium

CVSS v3

Base Score: 7.3

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Severity: High

EPSS

EPSS: 0.00021