The vulnerability affects cifs.upcall in cifs-utils. When processing a cifs.spnego key request, cifs.upcall may switch into attacker-controlled namespaces before fully dropping its root privileges. During this transition, the helper performs NSS lookups using getpwuid() while still retaining privileged kernel credentials. An attacker may create a controlled user and mount namespace containing a malicious NSS configuration and NSS module. By triggering a crafted cifs.spnego request through requestkey(), the attacker can cause cifs.upcall to load the malicious NSS module before privileges are fully dropped.
A flaw was found in cifs-utils. When trying to obtain Kerberos credentials, the cifs.upcall program from the cifs-utils package makes an upcall to the wrong namespace in containerized environments. This issue may lead to disclosing sensitive data from the host's Kerberos credentials cache.
This has been assigned CVE-2026-46243, see https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2026060140-CVE-2026-46243-3d1c@gregkh/
On Thursday, May 28th, 2026 at 12:07 AM, manizada <manizada () pm me> wrote: Hi folks,
Emailing here now that the embargo agreed upon with linux-distros@ has expired.
Flagging a local root vulnerability spanning both CIFS in the kernel and cifs-utils in userspace (originally reported to kernel/cifs maintainers on May 16). The kernel-side (only) fix has now been public for over a week and is queued for stable:
3da1fdf4efbc ("smb: client: reject userspace cifs.spnego descriptions")
Impact: Unprivileged user -> root code exec on any system where: - cifs-utils is installed (with the default cifs.spnego rule) - CIFS kernel module is loadable/compiled-in (typically the case), and - unprivileged user/mount namespaces are enabled.
Some default AppArmor/SELinux profiles block this.
Bug: An unprivileged user can call requestkey("cifs.spnego", ...) with a forged CIFS SPNEGO description. The request-key rule starts cifs.upcall as root. cifs.upcall then trusts attacker-supplied pid, uid, creduid, and upcalltarget fields as if they came from kernel CIFS.
For upcalltarget=app, affected cifs-utils versions switch into the supplied process's namespaces and perform NSS lookup before final privilege drop. A private mount namespace containing attacker-controlled /etc/nsswitch.conf and libnss.so.2 is therefore sufficient for code execution in the root helper.
Affected distros: This a non-exhaustive summary of some tested distros. The full table, including the cases where stock policy blocks exploitation (but relaxing AppArmor/SELinux/etc. enables exploitation), is in the attachment (and in an easier-to-read format in the writeup linked below).
Stock-default exploitable distros (cifs-utils comes preinstalled in the profile + unprivileged namespaces permitted by default + the AA/SELinux policies, if any, do not block the attack):
- Linux Mint Cinnamon 21.3 and 22.3 - CentOS Stream 9 GNOME - Rocky Linux 9 Workstation - Kali Linux headless 2021.4/2022.4/2023.4/2024.4/2025.4/2026.1 - AlmaLinux 9.7 Workstation/Azure cloud image - SLES 15 SP7/SAP 15 SP7/SAP 16
Exploitable if cifs-utils is installed, with no other default config changes: - Ubuntu 18.04/20.04/22.04 Desktop/Server - Pop!OS 22.04 Intel/24.04 Generic - Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop minimal/full and Server - Debian 11/12/13 netinst standard and GNOME/KDE/standard/XFCE - CentOS Stream 9 Cinnamon/KDE/MATE/XFCE - Rocky Linux 9 KDE/Workstation-Lite - openSUSE Leap 15.6 GNOME/KDE - openSUSE Tumbleweed GNOME/KDE - Rocky Linux 8 GenericCloud - Oracle Linux 8/9 KVM - Amazon Linux 2023 KVM
Immediate-term mitigations (aside from backporting the kernel fix): - Blocking the CIFS module from loading (assuming it's not built-in)/uninstalling cifs-utils if not used - Deleting/overriding the default cifs.spnego request-key rule (if Kerberos cifs is not required), e.g., after adjusting for your keyctl path:
cat >/etc/request-key.d/cifs.spnego.conf <<'EOF' create cifs.spnego /usr/sbin/keyctl negate %k 30 %S EOF
- Disabling unprivileged user namespaces
The CVE # assignment is still pending.
Full writeup: https://heyitsas.im/posts/cifswitch
PoC to validate mitigations: https://github.com/manizada/CIFSwitch
Thanks, -Asim Manizada