CVE-2026-28372 details a privilege escalation vulnerability affecting telnetd in GNU inetutils through version 2.7. This local flaw enables an unprivileged user to gain elevated privileges by abusing systemd service credentials support in util-linux's login(1) (release 2.40+) through client control over the CREDENTIALS_DIRECTORY environment variable and creating a login.noauth file. The vulnerability has a CVSS score of 7.8 HIGH, indicating a severe impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability with low attack complexity. Currently, there is no evidence of active exploitation, and no public exploit code is available on platforms like Metasploit or ExploitDB. While not on CISA's KEV or Hot List, the vulnerability has garnered some community discussion and media coverage, primarily through security mailing lists.
| Vendor | Product | Version(s) | CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
>= 0, <= 2.7CPE match | cpe:2.3:a:gnu:inetutils:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | ||
<= 2.7CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:a:gnu:inetutils:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
CVSS version used by this source: 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.1 Reddit, 0.2 Bluesky, 0.1 Mastodon, and 0.2 GitHub mentions.
The average CVE in this peer group has 0.3 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.
Remediation records are not available for this CVE.