CVE-2026-19079

Policycoreutils: policycoreutils: toctou race condition in fixfiles allows arbitrary selinux label manipulation

Published Aug 7, 2026 CVSS 3.1 · 4.4 Medium EPSS < 1% KEV · Not listed
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.

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

No advisories available
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Redhat rhel Els
CPEs 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
cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:10
cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:8
cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:9
cpe:/a:redhat:openshift:5
cpe:/o:redhat:rhel_els:6
cpe:/o:redhat:rhel_els:7
Vendors & Products Redhat rhel Els
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
Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

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

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'}

Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
redhat
Published
Updated
Nov 5, 2026, 7:26 PM
Reserved
Aug 6, 2026, 11:13 AM
Status
Awaiting Analysis
Published
Aug 7, 2026, 8:16 AM
Modified
Nov 5, 2026, 8:17 PM