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VulniPulse
Advisory severityHigh7.9Red Hat Linux

High [CVE-2026-54552] Incomplete privilege drop allows child processes to retain privileged group access.

This high-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-54552.

Aggregated and source-linked by VulniPulse. Data sources, validation and limitations.

CVE-2026-54552 Source published Source updated

VulniPulse record published Record updated

Affected products & platforms
Red Hat LinuxUnclassified
Open source advisory

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Summary

sh provides Python process launching. Prior to 2.2.4, the _uid option in sh.py performs an incomplete privilege drop on Linux and Unix-like systems.

When sh runs from an elevated process and launches a command with _uid set to an unprivileged user, the child changes its UID but can retain the parent process's supplementary groups because the privilege-drop sequence does not fully establish the target user's UID, primary GID, and supplementary groups.

The child can therefore retain access to files or resources granted to privileged groups such as root, docker, disk, shadow, or sudo, violating the expected _uid privilege boundary. This issue is fixed in version 2.2.4.

This incomplete privilege drop can allow the child process to retain access to files or resources granted to privileged groups, leading to unauthorized access and potential privilege escalation. Red Hat severity: Important — CVSS 7.9 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N).

Weakness: CWE-273. Red Hat lists Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4 as not affected.

Affected versions
  • < 2.2.4

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 14 days ago·verify at source

Fixed versions
  • 2.2.4

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 14 days ago·verify at source

Mitigation

Upgrade to a fixed release: 2.2.4. That is the remediation for this advisory.

The vendor advisory may list additional interim mitigations or workarounds not captured here — review it before change work.

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 14 days ago·verify at source

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