CVE-2026-23988

high

Description

Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives. Versions 4.11 and below contain a race condition (TOCTOU) in src/net.c during the creation, validation, and execution of the Fido PowerShell script. Since Rufus runs with elevated privileges (Administrator) but writes the script to the %TEMP% directory (writeable by standard users) without locking the file, a local attacker can replace the legitimate script with a malicious one between the file write operation and the execution step. This allows arbitrary code execution with Administrator privileges. This issue has been fixed in version 4.12_BETA.

References

https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/security/advisories/GHSA-hcx5-hrhj-xhq9

https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/releases/tag/v4.12_BETA

https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/commit/460cc5768aa45be07941b9e4ebc9bee02d282873

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Published: 2026-01-22

Updated: 2026-01-26

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: 0.00011