CVE-2018-6954

medium
Published — · Modified —
CVSS v3
CVSS v2
VIR risk
5.5

Description

systemd-tmpfiles in systemd through 237 mishandles symlinks present in non-terminal path components, which allows local users to obtain ownership of arbitrary files via vectors involving creation of a directory and a file under that directory, and later replacing that directory with a symlink. This occurs even if the fs.protected_symlinks sysctl is turned on.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
20%
Patch ETA

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: debian — https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2018-6954

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: suse — https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2018-6954.html

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: arch — https://security.archlinux.org/ASA-201901-4

OS impact

OSVersionStatusFixed in
arch archfixed240.0-3
suse slesaffected
debian debianbookwormfixed238-1
debian debianbullseyefixed238-1
debian debianforkyfixed238-1
debian debiansidfixed238-1
debian debiantrixiefixed238-1

References

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.