Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-54161

high Nessus Plugin ID 325148

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.

- Network UPS Tools is a collection of programs which provide a common interface for monitoring and administering UPS, PDU and SCD hardware. From 2.8.3 to 2.8.5, upsmon in clients/upsmon.c inserts the server-supplied ups.alarm value into shell commands executed by notify(), async_notify(), and wall(). When a monitored device reports an ALARM state and an operator has configured NOTIFYCMD with EXEC in NOTIFYFLAG ALARM, shell metacharacters in the alarm text are evaluated on POSIX or Windows and can execute arbitrary operating-system commands as the upsmon account, which is commonly root. An attacker can control the value through a malicious or compromised upsd, a man-in-the-middle on a plaintext upsd to upsmon connection, or a compromised UPS device whose driver supplies the alarm upstream of upsd; TLS between upsd and upsmon does not mitigate the compromised-device path. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.8.6. (CVE-2026-54161)

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-2026-54161

https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-54161

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 325148

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2026_54161.nasl

Version: 1.5

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 7/6/2026

Updated: 11/4/2026

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.9

Percentile: 96.32

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 10

Temporal Score: 9

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-54161

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.1

Temporal Score: 7.7

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

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:25.10, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:26.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:26.10, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:12.0, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:13.0, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:14.0, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:nut, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:nut

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

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-54161