CVE-2026-12080

Publication date 20 July 2026

Last updated 25 August 2026

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

A flaw was found in the QEMU Guest Agent (qga). A local unprivileged user can exploit a vulnerability in the guest-ssh-add-authorized-keys command handler by manipulating symbolic links. This can occur either through a deterministic directory-symlink bypass or a Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) file-symlink race. Successful exploitation allows the attacker to gain ownership of arbitrary root-owned files or directories, leading to root access. This vulnerability requires an external management layer (e.g., libvirt) to trigger the affected code path.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
qemu	26.04 LTS resolute	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	24.04 LTS noble	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	22.04 LTS jammy	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	20.04 LTS focal	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	18.04 LTS bionic	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	16.04 LTS xenial	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	14.04 LTS trusty	Vulnerable, fix deferred

Notes

mdeslaur

as of 2026-08-20, the patch has not been approved by upstream qemu developers

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
qemu	Upstream: https://patchew.org/QEMU/20260810142818.170418-1-kkostiuk@redhat.com/

Severity score breakdown

CVSS version: CVSS v3.0

Base score 7.3 · High

Base metrics

Parameter	Value
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	Low
User interaction	Required
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality impact	High
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	High

Scores

Parameter	Value
Base score	7.3 · High
Exploitability score	-
Impact score	-

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

References

Other references

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-12080