CVE-2026-48981: medium-severity vulnerability in mcdope pam_usb
pam_usb: xmlReadFile flags=0 permits XXE network entity fetching in conf.c
Published · Updated
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13Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackcvss 6.7epss 0.2%
pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary removable media. In versions prior to 0.9.2, pam_usb calls xmlReadFile() with flags=0 when loading the configuration file, allowing libxml2 to process external entity references (XXE), potentially making outbound network connections or local file reads at XML parse time from the context of the authenticating process. The vulnerability requires the configuration file to contain crafted XML entity references. Since pam_usb.conf is root-owned, direct exploitation requires prior write access to the config, but the defence-in-depth impact is significant given that pam_usb.so runs in setuid contexts (sudo, su). This issue has been fixed in version 0.9.2.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:L/A:L
Affected products
mcdope · pam_usbRelated CVEs — mcdope pam_usb
In the same product, most dangerous first.
CVE-2026-64669HIGHpam_usb: deny_remote bypassed by compressed IPv6 addresses in pusb_tmux_has_remote_clientsEPSS 0.4%CVE-2026-64668HIGHpam_usb: deny_remote bypassed by zone-indexed IPv6 addresses (fe80::1%eth0) in pusb_tmux_has_remote_clientsEPSS 0.4%CVE-2026-48064HIGHpam_usb: PAM_RHOST check skipped when deny_remote=false allows XDMCP authentication bypassEPSS 0.3%CVE-2026-47269HIGHpam_usb: deny_remote feature incorrectly classifies IPv4-mapped IPv6 remote connections as localEPSS 0.3%CVE-2026-47273MEDIUMpam_usb: XPath injection via PAM-supplied identifiers in pam_usb configuration queriesEPSS 0.3%CVE-2026-44711HIGHpam_usb: Symlink attacks on pad directory and pad files enable authentication bypass and root file corruptionEPSS 0.2%