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: n/a
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

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 Hummingbird Openshift
cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: redhat

Published:

Updated: 2026-08-07T07:21:55.858Z

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

Link: CVE-2026-19079

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

No data.

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-08-07T09:30:11Z

Weaknesses