CVE-2026-117618
Description
A flaw was found in Jenkins. The endpoint used to create the first user account does not verify whether the initial setup wizard has completed. This issue leads to a race condition (a timing conflict between concurrent operations) when the initial user account is being replaced. An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this flaw to create an unauthorized administrator account, thereby gaining full administrative control over the Jenkins server.
Statement
This vulnerability is rated as Important because unauthenticated remote attackers could gain complete administrative control over the server if they win the race condition during setup. However, the attack surface is limited to a brief timing window when initial administrator accounts are generated or modified. In Red Hat environments, such as OpenShift, Jenkins container images generally provision credentials automatically and run with the setup wizard disabled by default, which substantially limits practical exposure.
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Integrity,Other
Technical Impact: Alter Execution Logic; Unexpected State
The attacker can gain access to otherwise unauthorized resources.
Integrity,Other
Technical Impact: Modify Application Data; Modify Files or Directories; Modify Memory; Other
Race conditions such as this kind may be employed to gain read or write access to resources which are not normally readable or writable by the user in question.
Integrity,Other
Technical Impact: Other
The resource in question, or other resources (through the corrupted one), may be changed in undesirable ways by a malicious user.
Non-Repudiation
Technical Impact: Hide Activities
If a file or other resource is written in this method, as opposed to in a valid way, logging of the activity may not occur.
Non-Repudiation,Other
Technical Impact: Other
In some cases it may be possible to delete files a malicious user might not otherwise have access to, such as log files.
Other
Technical Impact: Unexpected State
The product may perform invalid actions when the resource is in an unexpected state.
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