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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2026-61898 json

accountsservice: shell injection via attacker-controlled ~/.pam_environment in Ubuntu language helper scripts

published 2026-08-20 2 mo ago modified 2026-10-18 21 d ago also EUVD-2026-63380

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 8%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The Ubuntu-specific language helper scripts (save-to-pam-env, update-langlist) shipped with accountsservice before 23.13.9-8ubuntu7 treat the user-controlled LANGUAGE entry in ~/.pam_environment as trusted input. The value is interpolated unescaped into a GNU sed replacement expression, allowing an attacker to inject a sed 'e' flag and arbitrary shell commands that execute with the privileges of the AccountsService helper process (real UID 0) via the SetLanguage D-Bus method.

Patch / fix

  • Canonical accountsservice 22.07.5-2ubuntu1.6, 23.13.9-2ubuntu6.1, 23.13.9-8ubuntu5.2, 23.13.9-8ubuntu7
  • accountsservice Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 22.07.5-2ubuntu1.6
  • accountsservice Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 23.13.9-2ubuntu6.1
  • accountsservice Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 23.13.9-8ubuntu5.2
  • accountsservice Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS 0.6.35-0ubuntu7.3+esm4
  • accountsservice Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 0.6.40-2ubuntu11.6+esm2
  • accountsservice Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS 0.6.45-1ubuntu1.3+esm2
  • accountsservice Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS 0.6.55-0ubuntu12~20.04.7+esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-61898

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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-2026-61898 updated cvss 7.8

accountsservice: accountsservice: Arbitrary code execution via shell injection

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 accountsservice, accountsservice-libs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 accountsservice, accountsservice-libs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 accountsservice, accountsservice-libs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 accountsservice
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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
total
Assessed
2 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • Canonical accountsservice

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-78 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command

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.