CVE-2026-48986: medium-severity vulnerability in mcdope pam_usb
pam_usb: Infinite loop DoS in process-tree walk when parent process exits during authentication
Published · Updated
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13Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackcvss 4.7epss 0.1%
pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using removable media. In pam_usb 0.9.1 and earlier, usb_get_process_parent_id() can cause an infinite loop DoS because it does not initialize *ppid on failure. In pusb_local_login(), the same variable is reused as input and output in a process-tree while loop; if /proc/<pid>/stat cannot be read (for example, when an ancestor process exits during authentication), the PID is not updated and the loop does not terminate. This hangs the authenticating process (such as sudo, sshd, or login) until it is forcibly terminated. This issue has been fixed in version 0.9.2.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
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%