A link-following flaw was found in the authorizedkey module of the ansible.posix collection, residual to the fix for CVE-2026-11837.
CVE-2026-126644
A link-following flaw was found in the authorizedkey module of the ansible.posix collection, residual to the fix for CVE-2026-11837. That fix guards only the final path component (os.chown with followsymlinks=False and ONOFOLLOW in safeopenwrite()). When an unprivileged local user replaces their ~/.ssh directory with a symlink to a directory they do not own, and an operator subsequently runs the authorizedkey task as root (a common provisioning pattern), the module resolves its path operations through the symlink: atomicmove() writes the temporary file in the symlink target and renames it to /authorizedkeys, creating or overwriting a file in the attacker-chosen directory, and os.chmod(sshdir, 0o700) follows the symlink and changes the target directory's permissions. The written file is chowned to the unprivileged user, so this is not a privilege escalation, but it allows an attacker to create or overwrite files (for example in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/, which APT reads regardless of file ownership) to cause integrity and availability impacts.
Assessment
- CVSS
- 3.9 (v3.1)
- Severity
- Low
- Known exploited
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Exploit availability
- Nothing found in Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or public PoC repositories
- Published
- 12 November 2026
- Last updated
- 12 November 2026
- Assigner
- redhat
CVSS vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L
At the source
References
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