CVE-2026-12080

high

Description

A flaw was found in the QEMU Guest Agent (qga). A local unprivileged user can exploit a vulnerability in the guest-ssh-add-authorized-keys command handler by manipulating symbolic links. This can occur either through a deterministic directory-symlink bypass or a Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) file-symlink race. Successful exploitation allows the attacker to gain ownership of arbitrary root-owned files or directories, leading to root access. This vulnerability requires an external management layer (e.g., libvirt) to trigger the affected code path.

References

https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/work_items/3929

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2499603

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-12080

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Published: 2026-07-20

Updated: 2026-07-21

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: 0.00181