Uutils coreutils chroot utility getpwnam untrusted search path

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability classified as problematic has been found in Uutils coreutils. This affects the function getpwnam of the component chroot utility. The manipulation leads to untrusted search path. This vulnerability is referenced as CVE-2026-35368. The attack can only be performed from a local environment. No exploit is available.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Uutils coreutils (version now known) and classified as critical. This issue affects the function getpwnam of the component chroot utility. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a untrusted search path vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-426. The product searches for critical resources using an externally-supplied search path that can point to resources that are not under the product's direct control. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

A vulnerability exists in the chroot utility of uutils coreutils when using the --userspec option. The utility resolves the user specification via getpwnam() after entering the chroot but before dropping root privileges. On glibc-based systems, this can trigger the Name Service Switch (NSS) to load shared libraries (e.g., libnss_*.so.2) from the new root directory. If the NEWROOT is writable by an attacker, they can inject a malicious NSS module to execute arbitrary code as root, facilitating a full container escape or privilege escalation.

The weakness was published by Zellic. It is possible to read the advisory at github.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-35368 since 04/02/2026. The exploitation is known to be difficult. Attacking locally is a requirement. Technical details of the vulnerability are known, but there is no available exploit. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 04/22/2026). The attack technique deployed by this issue is T1574 according to MITRE ATT&CK.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• Uutils

Name

• coreutils

Website

• Product: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/

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