5.5

CVE-2026-88838: busybox Protection Mechanism Failure

CVSS: 5.5v3.1MediumAwaiting analysis
AliasesDEBIAN-CVE-2026-88838UBUNTU-CVE-2026-88838
Published 13-10-2026Last modified 14-10-2026
Open JSON

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-88838 is a medium (CVSS 5.5) Protection Mechanism Failure vulnerability in busybox. EPSS estimates a 0.11% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 1.3% of scored vulnerabilities.

Overall risk
22/100
0100
Low · default modelHow is this calculated?
CVSS score
5.5/10
010
Medium · v3.1 (CVE.org)
EPSS score
0.11%
0%100%
Low · Change unavailable
KEVNot listedIn no KEV catalog
RansomwareNone recordedNo known use recorded
Public exploits0No public exploits recorded

Timeline

  1. 13-10-2026
    PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
  2. 14-10-2026
    Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

A flaw was found in BusyBox's mount utility. A non-root user can bypass mount security restrictions set in /etc/fstab by specifying clearing-mask options on the command line. These options pass the non-root flag filter and are merged with fstab options as strings; when the combined options are re-parsed, clearing options can override nosuid, nodev, and noexec protections the administrator intended to enforce.

CVSS metrics

4 scores · 4 sources · 1 version

EPSS trend

Probability

0.11%

Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days

Percentile

1%

Versus all other CVEs

30-day change

Change unavailable

Change unavailable

14-10-202619-10-2026
EPSS score
0.11%

Known exploited

Compare KEV catalogs

Not in any of the 3 tracked catalogs.

Public exploits

0 found

No public exploits indexed.

Weaknesses

CWE · root cause

Affected systems

Debian1 product
  • busyboxAll versions (No fix recorded)
Ubuntu1 product
  • busyboxAll versions (No fix recorded)

2 vendors · 2 products

References

5 links