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Vulnerability · Published Feb 27, 2026 · Assigned by mitre

CVE-2026-28372

High 7.4

In plain English

A high-severity security flaw in inetutils from GNU. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.4% (higher than 36% of all known vulnerabilities). Ready-made attack tooling exists: public proof-of-concept code. Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS 3.1)7.4High
Exploit odds (30 days)0.4%top 64.0% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: poc
Attack tooling1Public PoC

Official description

telnetd in GNU inetutils through 2.7 allows privilege escalation that can be exploited by abusing systemd service credentials support added to the login(1) implementation of util-linux in release 2.40. This is related to client control over the CREDENTIALS_DIRECTORY environment variable, and requires an unprivileged local user to create a login.noauth file.

Affected packages & fixed versions

EcosystemPackageFixed inAdvisory
Alpine:v3.24inetutils-telnet2.8-r0ALPINE-CVE-2026-28372
Debian:12inetutils2:2.4-2+deb12u3DEBIAN-CVE-2026-28372
Debian:13inetutils2:2.6-3+deb13u2DEBIAN-CVE-2026-28372
Debian:13inetutils2:2.6-3+deb13u2DSA-6144-1
Debian:14inetutils2:2.7-3DEBIAN-CVE-2026-28372
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSinetutils2:2.5-3ubuntu4.2USN-8387-1
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSinetutils2:2.5-3ubuntu4.2UBUNTU-CVE-2026-28372
Ubuntu:25.10inetutils2:2.6-1ubuntu3.2USN-8387-1
Ubuntu:25.10inetutils2:2.6-1ubuntu3.2UBUNTU-CVE-2026-28372
Ubuntu:26.04:LTSinetutils2:2.7-2ubuntu1.1UBUNTU-CVE-2026-28372
Ubuntu:26.04:LTSinetutils2:2.7-2ubuntu1.1USN-8387-1

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
GNU inetutils 0 – through 2.7

Weakness: CWE-829 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

References