CVE-2026-35338: Uutils Coreutils

High severity, CVSS 7.3. EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

A vulnerability in the chmod utility of uutils coreutils allows users to bypass the --preserve-root safety mechanism. The implementation only validates if the target path is literally / and does not canonicalize the path. An attacker or accidental user can use path variants such as /../ or symbolic links to execute destructive recursive operations (e.g., chmod -R 000) on the entire root filesystem, leading to system-wide permission loss and potential complete system breakdown.

Affected products

• Uutils Coreutils: before 0.6.0 (fixed in 0.6.0)

Published 2026-04-22. Last modified 2026-06-17.