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High · 7.1 CVE-2026-47272 EUVD-2026-32653

pam_usb: OTP pad authentication bypass via missing system pad check and uninitialized RNG buffer

Published May 27, 2026 · Updated May 28, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary removable media. Prior to 0.9.0, the pusb_pad_compare() function in src/pad.c only verified that the user-side pad (~/.pamusb/device.pad) could be read, but did not enforce that the system-side pad (the pad file on the USB device) was also present and readable. If the user-side pad was deleted or unreadable, the function returned a failure that was treated as non-fatal in certain code paths, allowing authentication to succeed without the USB device being verified. A local user can delete their own ~/.pamusb/device.pad to remove the USB device requirement and authenticate without the physical device. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.9.0.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
mcdope pam_usb < 0.9.0 —

References