CVE-2026-35360 PUBLISHED

uutils coreutils touch Arbitrary File Truncation via TOCTOU Race Condition

Assigner: canonical
Reserved: 02.04.2026 Published: 22.04.2026 Updated: 22.04.2026

The touch utility in uutils coreutils is vulnerable to a Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) race condition during file creation. When the utility identifies a missing path, it later attempts creation using File::create(), which internally uses O_TRUNC. An attacker can exploit this window to create a file or swap a symlink at the target path, causing touch to truncate an existing file and leading to permanent data loss.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
CVSS Score: 6.3

Product Status

Vendor Uutils
Product coreutils
Versions Default: affected

Credits

  • Zellic finder

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-367: Time-of-Check Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) Race Condition CWE

Impacts

  • CAPEC-29: Leveraging Time-of-Check and Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) Race Conditions