Vulnerability · Published Jan 22, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

CVE-2026-23988Rufus has Local Privilege Escalation via TOCTOU Race Condition in Fido Script Handling

High 7.3

In plain English

A high-severity security flaw in rufus from pbatard. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 11% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 3.1)7.3High

Exploit odds (30 days)0.2%top 89.3% of all CVEs

Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: poc

Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives. Versions 4.11 and below contain a race condition (TOCTOU) in src/net.c during the creation, validation, and execution of the Fido PowerShell script. Since Rufus runs with elevated privileges (Administrator) but writes the script to the %TEMP% directory (writeable by standard users) without locking the file, a local attacker can replace the legitimate script with a malicious one between the file write operation and the execution step. This allows arbitrary code execution with Administrator privileges. This issue has been fixed in version 4.12_BETA.

Affected products (as reported)

Vendor	Product	Versions
pbatard	rufus	< 4.12_BETA

Weakness: CWE-367 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

References

https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/security/advisories/GHSA-hcx5-hrhj-xhq9 x_refsource_CONFIRM
https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/commit/460cc5768aa45be07941b9e4ebc9bee02d282873 x_refsource_MISC
https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/releases/tag/v4.12_BETA x_refsource_MISC