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High · 8.8 CVE-2026-44713 EUVD-2026-32657

pam_usb: Command injection via $TMUX environment variable leads to RCE as root

Published May 27, 2026 · Updated May 30, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary removable media. Prior to 0.8.7, src/tmux.c reads the user's $TMUX environment variable, splits it on commas, and interpolates the socket-path component directly into a shell command passed to popen(). Because the value is placed inside double-quotes without sanitisation, any value containing " terminates the quoted string and injects arbitrary shell syntax. popen() runs as root inside the PAM stack. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.8.7.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
mcdope pam_usb < 0.8.7 —

References