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 8, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.
Aggregated and source-linked by VulniPulse. Data sources, validation and limitations.
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Summary
A flaw was found in MRTG. When the MRTG daemon is started as a root user and subsequently drops privileges, a local, low-privileged attacker can exploit a symbolic link (symlink) following vulnerability.
By influencing or pre-placing a symlink in the process ID (PID) file path, the attacker can trick the root process into changing the ownership of an arbitrary existing file to the daemon user. This can lead to local privilege escalation, allowing unauthorized access to or modification of sensitive files.
Red Hat severity: Important — CVSS 7.1 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N). Weakness: CWE-59.
Affected Red Hat products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. Will not fix / out of support: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Red Hat fixing advisory: RHSA-2026:57596, RHSA-2026:65832, RHSA-2026:57600.
Affected products named by the advisory: 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 26 days ago·verify at source
- mrtg-0:2.17.10-12.el10_2.1
- mrtg-0:2.17.7-1.el8_10.1
- mrtg-0:2.17.7-12.el9_8.1
- RHSA-2026:57596
- RHSA-2026:65832
- RHSA-2026:57600
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 26 days 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 26 days ago·verify at source
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