Red Hat Enterprise Linux/OpenStack Platform keyfile link following

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability has been found in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenStack Platform and classified as critical. This issue affects the function keyfile. The manipulation leads to link following. This vulnerability is documented as CVE-2026-11837. The attack needs to be performed locally. There is not any exploit available.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenStack Platform (the affected version unknown) and classified as critical. This issue affects the function keyfile. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a link following vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-59. The product attempts to access a file based on the filename, but it does not properly prevent that filename from identifying a link or shortcut that resolves to an unintended resource. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

A local privilege escalation vulnerability was found in the ansible.posix authorized_key module. The module's keyfile() function uses os.chown() instead of os.lchown() and opens files without O_NOFOLLOW when managing SSH authorized keys. An unprivileged local user can pre-stage symbolic links in their ~/.ssh directory to redirect file ownership changes to arbitrary system paths when an operator runs the authorized_key task as root, leading to local privilege escalation.

The advisory is shared at access.redhat.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-11837 since 06/10/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. An attack has to be approached locally. Technical details are known, but no exploit is available. The price for an exploit might be around USD $5k-$25k at the moment (estimation calculated on 06/10/2026).

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 320361 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-11837), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

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

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Tenable (320361) and EUVD (EUVD-2026-35982). Several companies clearly confirm that VulDB is the primary source for best vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Red Hat

Name

• Enterprise Linux
• OpenStack Platform

License

• commercial

Website

• Vendor: https://www.redhat.com/

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Entryinfo

Several companies clearly confirm that VulDB is the primary source for best vulnerability data.

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