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Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2025-68788

critical Nessus Plugin ID 283646

Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

 - fsnotify: do not generate ACCESS/MODIFY events on child for special files inotify/fanotify do not allow users with no read access to a file to subscribe to events (e.g. IN_ACCESS/IN_MODIFY), but they do allow the same user to subscribe for watching events on children when the user has access to the parent directory (e.g. /dev). Users with no read access to a file but with read access to its parent directory can still stat the file and see if it was accessed/modified via atime/mtime change. The same is not true for special files (e.g. /dev/null). Users will not generally observe atime/mtime changes when other users read/write to special files, only when someone sets atime/mtime via utimensat(). Align fsnotify events with this stat behavior and do not generate ACCESS/MODIFY events to parent watchers on read/write of special files. The events are still generated to parent watchers on utimensat(). This closes some side- channels that could be possibly used for information exfiltration [1]. [1] https://snee.la/pdf/pubs/file- notification-attacks.pdf (CVE-2025-68788)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

See Also

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2025-68788

Plugin Details

Severity: Critical

ID: 283646

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2025_68788.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 1/13/2026

Updated: 1/13/2026

Supported Sensors: Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.4

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 6.4

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2025-68788

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.8

Temporal Score: 9

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:U/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:14.0, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:11.0, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:linux, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:13.0, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:12.0

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, global_settings/vendor_unpatched, Host/OS/identifier

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 1/13/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2025-68788