Description
A TOCTOU (Time-of-Check-Time-of-Use) race condition vulnerability was found in the fixfiles script in policycoreutils. When running fixfiles relabel or fixfiles restore, the script used find and chcon commands to locate and relabel unlabeled files under /tmp and other directories. A local attacker could exploit a race window between the file discovery and the label change operation by swapping directory components with symlinks, causing chcon to follow the symlink and modify SELinux labels on arbitrary system files. This could undermine SELinux mandatory access control protections on critical files such as /etc/shadow.
Published: 2026-08-07
Score: 4.4 Medium
EPSS: < 1% Very Low
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
AI Analysis

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Remediation

Vendor Workaround

As a workaround, use 'restorecon -R /' directly instead of 'fixfiles relabel' or 'fixfiles restore' to perform filesystem relabeling. This avoids the vulnerable /tmp-specific find+chcon code path entirely. Note that this skips the /tmp cleanup logic, but on modern systems where /tmp is mounted as tmpfs, this cleanup is unnecessary as tmpfs cannot retain files from a prior boot.

Tracking

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Advisories

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History

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 21:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Redhat hardened Images
Redhat openshift Container Platform
Redhat policycoreutils
Vendors & Products Redhat hardened Images
Redhat openshift Container Platform
Redhat policycoreutils

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 20:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
References

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 18:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}


Fri, 07 Aug 2026 07:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description A TOCTOU (Time-of-Check-Time-of-Use) race condition vulnerability was found in the fixfiles script in policycoreutils. When running fixfiles relabel or fixfiles restore, the script used find and chcon commands to locate and relabel unlabeled files under /tmp and other directories. A local attacker could exploit a race window between the file discovery and the label change operation by swapping directory components with symlinks, causing chcon to follow the symlink and modify SELinux labels on arbitrary system files. This could undermine SELinux mandatory access control protections on critical files such as /etc/shadow.
Title Policycoreutils: policycoreutils: toctou race condition in fixfiles allows arbitrary selinux label manipulation
First Time appeared Redhat
Redhat enterprise Linux
Redhat hummingbird
Redhat openshift
Weaknesses CWE-367
CPEs cpe:/a:redhat:hummingbird:1
cpe:/a:redhat:openshift:4
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:10
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:9
Vendors & Products Redhat
Redhat enterprise Linux
Redhat hummingbird
Redhat openshift
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 4.4, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N'}


Subscriptions

Redhat Enterprise Linux Hardened Images Hummingbird Openshift Openshift Container Platform Policycoreutils
cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: redhat

Published:

Updated: 2026-08-07T20:20:25.425Z

Reserved: 2026-08-06T11:13:39.734Z

Link: CVE-2026-19079

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2026-08-07T17:41:17.609Z

cve-icon NVD

Status : Awaiting Analysis

Published: 2026-08-07T08:16:46.160

Modified: 2026-08-14T19:07:46.080

Link: CVE-2026-19079

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-08-08T20:53:24Z

Weaknesses
  • CWE-367

    Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition