CVE-2026-41991
GNU gzip contains a vulnerability in the gzexe utility related to insecure temporary file handling. When the mktemp utility is not available in the user’s PATH, gzexe falls back to constructing a temporary file path based solely on the process ID (PID). This predictable filename is created without exclusive access or existence checks. A local attacker can pre‑create the predicted temporary file path as a symbolic link pointing to an arbitrary file writable by the victim. When gzexe runs, it follows the symlink and overwrites the target file, resulting in a time‑of‑check to time‑of‑use (TOCTOU) condition that allows arbitrary file overwrite. This issue has been fixed in the commit 4e6f8b24ab823146ab8776f0b7fe486ab34d4269
- CVSS 4.0
- 2.0
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N - CVSS 3.1
- 4.7
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N - EPSS
- 0.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days; higher than 1% of CVEs (scores of 2026-10-25)
- CWE
- CWE-377
- Published
- Modified
- Record from
- the NVD, synced
Affected
- gnu:gzip