CVE-2026-35368 PUBLISHED

uutils coreutils chroot Local Privilege Escalation and chroot Escape in via Name Service Switch (NSS) Injection

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

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.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS Score: 7.2

Product Status

Vendor Uutils
Product coreutils
Versions Default: affected

Credits

  • Zellic finder

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-426: Untrusted Search Path CWE

Impacts

  • CAPEC-233: Privilege Escalation