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High · 7.3 CVE-2026-23988 EUVD-2026-4202

Rufus has Local Privilege Escalation via TOCTOU Race Condition in Fido Script Handling

Published Jan 22, 2026 · Updated Jan 23, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives. Versions 4.11 and below contain a race condition (TOCTOU) in src/net.c during the creation, validation, and execution of the Fido PowerShell script. Since Rufus runs with elevated privileges (Administrator) but writes the script to the %TEMP% directory (writeable by standard users) without locking the file, a local attacker can replace the legitimate script with a malicious one between the file write operation and the execution step. This allows arbitrary code execution with Administrator privileges. This issue has been fixed in version 4.12_BETA.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
pbatard rufus < 4.12_BETA —

References