Description
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.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected | Fixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | — | — |
Fixed in Linux distributions
Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.
Debian
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian 14 | policycoreutils | No fix yet | — |
| Debian 13 | policycoreutils | No fix yet | — |
| Debian 12 | policycoreutils | No fix yet | — |
Ubuntu
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu 26.10 | policycoreutils | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 26.04 LTS | policycoreutils | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 24.04 LTS | policycoreutils | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 22.04 LTS | policycoreutils | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | policycoreutils | No fix yet | — |
Show 3 more (older releases, extended support, other products)Fewer releases
| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu 18.04 LTS | policycoreutils | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 16.04 LTS | policycoreutils | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 14.04 LTS | policycoreutils | No fix yet | — |
Red Hat
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Hardened Images 1 | policycoreutils +8 | 3.11-2.2.hum1 | RHSA-2026:51861 |
Amazon Linux
| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Linux 2 | policycoreutils +6 | 2.5-22.amzn2.0.1 | ALAS2-2026-3949 |
Advisories 2
- RHSA-2026:51861 Red Hat Security Advisory: Red Hat Hardened Images RPMs Security Update Red Hat Security Advisories (RHSA) · Oct 6, 2026
- ALAS2-2026-3949 Moderate: policycoreutils security update (Amazon Linux 2) Amazon Linux Security Center (ALAS) · Sep 28, 2026
References
- RHSA-2026:51861 vendor-advisory
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-19079 vdb-entry
- RHBZ#2511976 issue-tracking
- https://github.com/SELinuxProject/selinux/commit/a556538c2d5d2583273e025b45c02651fef47679