CVE-2026-19079: Policycoreutils: policycoreutils: toctou race condition in fixfiles allows arbitrary selinux label manipulation

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-19079 is a medium (CVSS 4.4) vulnerability in policycoreutils. EPSS estimates a 0.11% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 1.1% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 07-08-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 01-09-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

A TOCTOU (Time-of-Check-Time-of-Use) race condition vulnerability was found in the fixfiles script in policycoreutils. When running fixfiles relabel or fixfiles restore, the script used find and chcon commands to locate and relabel unlabeled files under /tmp and other directories. A local attacker could exploit a race window between the file discovery and the label change operation by swapping directory components with symlinks, causing chcon to follow the symlink and modify SELinux labels on arbitrary system files. This could undermine SELinux mandatory access control protections on critical files such as /etc/shadow.

• CWE-367Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race ConditionThe product checks the state of a resource before using that resource, but the resource's state can change between the check and the use in a way that invalidates the results of the check.