CVE Intelligence
Skip to main content
HIGH

CVE-2026-44713

CVE-2026-44713 — pam_usb: Command injection via $TMUX environment variable leads to RCE as root

pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary removable media. Prior to 0.8.7, src/tmux.c reads the user's $TMUX environment variable, splits it on commas, and interpolates the socket-path component directly into a shell command passed to popen(). Because the value is placed inside double-quotes without sanitisation, any value containing " terminates the quoted string and injects arbitrary shell syntax. popen() runs as root inside the PAM stack. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.8.7.

Published Updated Sources: cvelistV5, GitHub_M

Triage

Is it exploited, how likely is exploitation, what does it touch, and how severe do the scoring sources call it.

Exploitation

Unreported

no source claims exploitation

EPSS

0%

chance of exploitation in 30 days

Affects

mcdope

pam_usb

CVSS base

8.8

HIGH

CISA SSVC assessment

Three decision points CISA publishes for the CVEs it assesses · SSVC 2.0.3. A stakeholder decision, not a severity score.

CISA

Exploitation

None

none · proof-of-concept · active

Automatable

No

can an attacker script all four kill-chain steps

Technical impact

Total

partial · total control of the vulnerable component

Affected scope

The catalog records vendors and products as separate lists, not pairs, so which product belongs to which vendor is not something this page can say.

Vendors (1)

mcdope

Products (1)

pam usb

Every base score collected

Sources score independently and disagree; each row says who scored it and under which version.

ScoreVersionSeverityExpl.ImpactSource
8.8CVSS 3.1HIGH——cvelistV5

Weakness & attack patterns

  • CWE-78
  • CWE-116

Detection

Read off the CVSS vector and the weakness class. Starting points, not rules we have tested.

  • Search application, proxy, and WAF logs for requests touching /tmux.c.

References

1 on the record

Elsewhere on this site

  • mcdopeevery CVE for this vendor
  • CWE-78other pages naming this weakness

Not in any source we poll

Listed rather than left blank: an empty field and an unmeasured one look identical on screen, and only one is a reason to look elsewhere.

  • No confirmed IOCs, IP addresses, domains, file hashes, or malware artifacts supplied.
  • No organization-specific asset inventory, compensating-control status, or patch deployment evidence supplied.
  • No exploit packet captures, log samples, or incident case IDs supplied.