High [CVE-2026-72694] MRTG daemon symlink-following chown allows local privilege escalation via PID file path manipulation
This high-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-72694 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.
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Summary
MRTG daemon symlink-following chown allows local privilege escalation via PID file path manipulation. Red Hat rates this important (CVSS 7.1).
Weakness: CWE-59.
Affected products named by the advisory: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8; and 2 more.
Affected products named by the advisory: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9; Red Hat package: mrtg.
Affected versions
No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 2 hours ago·verify at source
Fixed versions
No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists — confirm against the vendor advisory.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 2 hours ago·verify at source
Mitigation checklist
- To mitigate this issue, avoid starting the MRTG daemon as root with the `--daemon` option. Instead, configure MRTG to run directly as an unprivileged user. If root startup is strictly necessary, ensure that the PID file and its directory are owned by root and are not writable by unprivileged users, and prevent untrusted users from influencing the `--pid-file` path. Changes to service configuration may require a service restart to take effect.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 2 hours ago·verify at source
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