CVE-2026-23268: apparmor: fix unprivileged local user can do privileged policy management

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-23268 is a high (CVSS 7.8) vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.14% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 3.7% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 18-03-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 05-08-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: apparmor: fix unprivileged local user can do privileged policy management An unprivileged local user can load, replace, and remove profiles by opening the apparmorfs interfaces, via a confused deputy attack, by passing the opened fd to a privileged process, and getting the privileged process to write to the interface. This does require a privileged target that can be manipulated to do the write for the unprivileged process, but once such access is achieved full policy management is possible and all the possible implications that implies: removing confinement, DoS of system or target applications by denying all execution, by-passing the unprivileged user namespace restriction, to exploiting kernel bugs for a local privilege escalation. The policy management interface can not have its permissions simply changed from 0666 to 0600 because non-root processes need to be able to load policy to different policy namespaces. Instead ensure the task writing the interface has privileges that are a subset of the task that opened the interface. This is already done via policy for confined processes, but unconfined can delegate access to the opened fd, by-passing the usual policy check.

No weakness data has been published for this record.