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Medium · 6.3 CVE-2026-47274 EUVD-2026-32651

pam_usb: Uncontrolled search path in pam_usb tools allows privilege escalation via PATH manipulation

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 0.9.0, multiple pam_usb helper tools resolved external binaries through the PATH environment variable rather than using absolute paths. An attacker who can influence the process environment during PAM authentication or tool execution could substitute malicious binaries. The affected tools are pamusb-check (src/tmux.c), pamusb-conf (tools/pamusb-conf), and pamusb-keyring-unlock-gnome (tools/pamusb-keyring-unlock-gnome). This vulnerability is fixed in 0.9.0.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
mcdope pam_usb < 0.9.0 —

References