CVE-2026-6970 PUBLISHED

authd Denial of Service and Local Privilege Escalation

Assigner: canonical
Reserved: 24.04.2026 Published: 27.04.2026 Updated: 27.04.2026

authd prior to version 0.6.4 contains a logic error in primary group ID assignment that can lead to local privilege escalation. When a user's primary group ID (GID) differs from their UID, either because the account was created with authd prior to version 0.5.4 or because the primary group was manually changed via the authctl group set-gid command, and the user's identity provider record is updated, authd incorrectly resets the user's primary group ID to their UID upon next login. This causes newly created files and directories to be owned by the wrong group, causing denial of service issues, and potentially granting unintended access to other local users and allowing local privilege escalation.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CVSS Score: 7.3

Product Status

Vendor Canonical
Product authd
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0.6.0 to 0.6.4 (excl.)
  • affected from 0.6.1 to 0.6.1ubuntu0.1 (excl.)

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-842 Placement of user into incorrect group CWE

Impacts

  • CAPEC-233 Privilege Escalation