CVE-2026-19079

Public on 2026-08-07
Modified on 2026-08-08
Description
A TOCTOU (Time-of-Check-Time-of-Use) race condition vulnerability was found in the fixfiles script in policycoreutils. When running fixfiles relabel or fixfiles restore, the script used find and chcon commands to locate and relabel unlabeled files under /tmp and other directories. A local attacker could exploit a race window between the file discovery and the label change operation by swapping directory components with symlinks, causing chcon to follow the symlink and modify SELinux labels on arbitrary system files. This could undermine SELinux mandatory access control protections on critical files such as /etc/shadow.
Severity
Medium severity
Medium
See what this means
CVSS v3 Base Score
4.4
See breakdown

Affected Packages

Platform Package Release Date Advisory Status
Amazon Linux 2 - Core policycoreutils Pending Fix
Amazon Linux 2 - Selinux-ng Extra policycoreutils Pending Fix
Amazon Linux 2023 policycoreutils Pending Fix

CVSS Scores

Score Type Score Vector
Amazon Linux CVSSv3 4.4 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N