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Fencer Vulns
medium 4.4

CVE-2026-19079 json

Policycoreutils: policycoreutils: toctou race condition in fixfiles allows arbitrary selinux label manipulation

published 2026-08-07 3 mo ago modified 2026-11-05 3 d ago also EUVD-2026-54398

cvss
4.4
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 1%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A TOCTOU (Time-of-Check-Time-of-Use) race condition vulnerability was found in the fixfiles script in policycoreutils. When running fixfiles relabel or fixfiles restore, the script used find and chcon commands to locate and relabel unlabeled files under /tmp and other directories. A local attacker could exploit a race window between the file discovery and the label change operation by swapping directory components with symlinks, causing chcon to follow the symlink and modify SELinux labels on arbitrary system files. This could undermine SELinux mandatory access control protections on critical files such as /etc/shadow.

Patch / fix

  • Red Hat Red Hat Hardened Images 3.11-2.2.hum1
  • policycoreutils hummingbird 1 3.11-2.2.hum1
  • policycoreutils-gui hummingbird 1 3.11-2.2.hum1
  • policycoreutils-dbus hummingbird 1 3.11-2.2.hum1
  • policycoreutils-newrole hummingbird 1 3.11-2.2.hum1
  • policycoreutils-sandbox hummingbird 1 3.11-2.2.hum1
  • python3-policycoreutils hummingbird 1 3.11-2.2.hum1
  • policycoreutils-restorecond hummingbird 1 3.11-2.2.hum1
  • policycoreutils-python-utils hummingbird 1 3.11-2.2.hum1

red hat advisories RHSA-2026:51861

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-19079 updated cvss 4.4

policycoreutils: policycoreutils: TOCTOU race condition in fixfiles allows arbitrary SELinux label manipulation

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 policycoreutils, policycoreutils-gui, policycoreutils-python, policycoreutils-newrole, policycoreutils-sandbox, policycoreutils 3.10-2.el10_2
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 policycoreutils, policycoreutils-gui, policycoreutils-python, policycoreutils-newrole, policycoreutils-sandbox, policycoreutils-restorecond, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 policycoreutils-gui, policycoreutils-dbus, policycoreutils-newrole, policycoreutils-sandbox, python3-policycoreutils, policycoreutils-restorecond, +2 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 policycoreutils-gui, policycoreutils-dbus, policycoreutils-newrole, policycoreutils-sandbox, python3-policycoreutils, policycoreutils-restorecond, +2 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 policycoreutils 3.10-2.el10_2 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8, openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Hardened Images policycoreutils 3.11-2.2.hum1, policycoreutils-gui 3.11-2.2.hum1, policycoreutils-dbus 3.11-2.2.hum1, policycoreutils-newrole 3.11-2.2.hum1, policycoreutils-sandbox 3.11-2.2.hum1, python3-policycoreutils 3.11-2.2.hum1, +2 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:51861

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
3 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.11% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 1% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 4.4 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

Affected products

  • Red Hat Red Hat Hardened Images
  • Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
  • Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
  • Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
  • Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
  • Red Hat Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4
  • Red Hat Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.