CVE-2026-91837
Description
A flaw was found in NetworkManager-iodine, the iodine VPN plugin for NetworkManager. A local unprivileged user can exploit a vulnerability in how the 'nameserver' setting is processed when establishing an iodine VPN connection. By embedding shell metacharacters (special characters that can execute commands) in the 'nameserver' value, an attacker can inject and execute arbitrary commands. These commands run with root privileges before the application drops its elevated permissions, leading to local privilege escalation.
Statement
Red Hat Product Security has determined that this vulnerability does not affect any currently supported Red Hat product. This assessment may evolve based on further analysis and discovery. For more information about this vulnerability and the products it affects, please see the linked references.
Mitigation
To mitigate this issue, remove the `NetworkManager-iodine` and `iodine` packages if they are not required for system functionality. These packages are not installed by default in minimal Red Hat Enterprise Linux installations.
bash
sudo dnf remove NetworkManager-iodine iodine
If these packages are necessary, ensure that only trusted users have the ability to create and activate VPN connections.
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Confidentiality,Integrity,Availability,Non-Repudiation
Technical Impact: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands; DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; Read Files or Directories; Modify Files or Directories; Read Application Data; Modify Application Data; Hide Activities
Attackers could execute unauthorized operating system commands, which could then be used to disable the product, or read and modify data for which the attacker does not have permissions to access directly. Since the targeted application is directly executing the commands instead of the attacker, any malicious activities may appear to come from the application or the application's owner.
Acknowledgements
Red Hat would like to thank Andreas Gabriel Berbescu for reporting this issue.
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