Amazon Linux 2 : libssh2, --advisory ALAS2-2026-3861 (ALAS-2026-3861)

high Nessus Plugin ID 337231

Synopsis

The remote Amazon Linux 2 host is missing a security update.

Description

The version of libssh2 installed on the remote host is prior to 1.4.3-12. It is, therefore, affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the ALAS2-2026-3861 advisory.

libssh2 through 1.11.1, fixed in commit 5e47761, contains a double-free vulnerability in the sftp_open() function in src/sftp.c that allows a malicious SSH server to corrupt the heap of any authenticated client opening an SFTP session. When a server responds to SSH_FXP_OPEN with SSH_FXP_STATUS containing FX_OK, the response data buffer is freed, and if a subsequent sftp_packet_require() call returns a specific error such as LIBSSH2_ERROR_CHANNEL_PACKET_EXCEEDED, the same pointer is freed a second time, enabling tcache dup conditions on glibc systems that allow overlapping allocations and function pointer overwrites.
(CVE-2026-66032)

libssh2 through 1.11.1, fixed in commit a13bb6c, contains a missing bounds check vulnerability that allows a malicious SSH server to trigger an arbitrary-length heap out-of-bounds read and a free of an uninitialized pointer via the publickey subsystem. In libssh2_publickey_list_fetch(), the version 1 response parser reads a server-controlled comment_len value and advances the parse pointer without verifying sufficient bytes remain in the buffer, causing the out-of-bounds read to leak heap pointers from adjacent allocations defeating ASLR, followed by heap allocator state corruption when the error cleanup path frees an uninitialized pointer from a non-zeroed realloc() region. (CVE-2026-66034)

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the tested product security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Run 'yum update libssh2' or or 'yum update --advisory ALAS2-2026-3861' to update your system.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 337231

File Name: al2_ALAS-2026-3861.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Family: Amazon Linux Local Security Checks

Published: 8/18/2026

Updated: 8/18/2026

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.9

Percentile: 96.78

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 10

Temporal Score: 7.4

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-66032

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.8

Temporal Score: 7.7

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

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

CVSS v4

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.7

Threat Score: 6.3

Threat Vector: CVSS:4.0/E:U

Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:amazon:linux:2, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:libssh2-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:libssh2-devel, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:libssh2-docs, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:libssh2

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/AmazonLinux/release, Host/AmazonLinux/rpm-list

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 8/17/2026

Vulnerability Publication Date: 7/24/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-66032, CVE-2026-66034

IAVA: 2026-A-0788

Detections

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