A flaw was found in the libblkid library of util-linux. During nested partition probing, the BSD, Minix, Solaris x86, and UnixWare partition probers cache a raw pointer to a parent partition entry in a dynamically allocated array. When subsequent partition additions cause the array to be reallocated, this pointer becomes stale, leading to a heap use-after-free read. An attacker who can present a crafted block device image (for example, via USB insertion or a loop-mounted disk image) can trigger this flaw without user interaction, as libblkid is invoked automatically by udev/udisks as root on block-device hot-plug events. This could lead to limited information disclosure or denial of service.
A flaw was found in util-linux. Improper hostname canonicalization in the login(1) utility, when invoked with the -h option, can modify the supplied remote hostname before setting PAMRHOST. A remote attacker could exploit this by providing a specially crafted hostname, potentially bypassing host-based Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) access control rules that rely on fully qualified domain names. This could lead to unauthorized access.
Last updated 31 August 2026
wall in util-linux through 2.40 often installed with setgid tty permissions allows escape sequences to be sent to other users' terminals through argv. (Specifically escape sequences received from stdin are blocked but escape sequences received from argv are not blocked.) There may be plausible scenarios where this leads to account takeover.
DISPUTED An integer overflow in util-linux through 2.37.1 can potentially cause a buffer overflow if an attacker were able to use system resources in a way that leads to a large number in the /proc/sysvipc/sem file. NOTE: this is unexploitable in GNU C Library environments, and possibly in all realistic environments.
In util-linux before 2.32-rc1, bash-completion/umount allows local users to gain privileges by embedding shell commands in a mountpoint name, which is mishandled during a umount command (within Bash) by a different user, as demonstrated by logging in as root and entering umount followed by a tab character for autocompletion.
runuser in util-linux allows local users to escape to the parent session via a crafted TIOCSTI ioctl call, which pushes characters to the terminal's input buffer.
script command in the util-linux package before 2.11n allows local users to overwrite arbitrary files by setting a hardlink from the typescript log file to any file on the system, then having root execute the script command.
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures assigned an identifier CVE-2007-5191 to the following vulnerability:
mount and umount in util-linux call the setuid and setgid functions in the wrong order and do not check the return values, which might allow attackers to gain privileges via helpers such as mount.nfs.
References: http://git.kernel.org/?p=utils/util-linux-ng/util-linux-ng.git;a=commit;h=ebbeb2c7ac1b00b6083905957837a271e80b187e