CVE-2026-109969 Red Hat CVE debrief

Who should care

Defenders responsible for maintaining systems with clevis installations, especially in environments with permissive umasks, should assess exposure and prioritize verification and updates. This includes reviewing the supplied official advisory or CVE record to validate affected scope, severity, and vendor guidance. They should also plan vendor-supported updates or mitigations through normal change control where exposure is confirmed and review compensating

Why it matters

The clevis vulnerability allows local users to inject arbitrary device/key pairs or receive LUKS passphrases under a permissive process umask, potentially leading to local privilege escalation and data exposure.

• Local key injection and potential data exposure
• Elevation of privileges through clevis exploitation
• LUKS passphrase interception and potential decryption
• Verification of clevis installations and configurations

Technical summary

The clevis-pkcs11-afunix-socket-unlock daemon creates AF_UNIX sockets without explicit permission restrictions or peer credential verification, allowing local users to inject arbitrary device/key pairs or receive LUKS passphrases under a permissive process umask. This vulnerability affects clevis installations, particularly in environments with permissive umasks, potentially leading to local privilege escalation and data exposure. The issue arises from the lack of authentication on pkcs#11 af_unix sockets, which enables arbitrary device/key pair injection or LUKS passphrase interception.

Defensive priority

Defenders should prioritize verifying and updating clevis installations, especially in environments with permissive umasks.

Recommended defensive actions

• Verify clevis installations and configurations
• Update clevis to the latest version
• Restrict umask permissions
• Monitor for suspicious activity
• Review compensating controls for exposed systems
• Check relevant monitoring, detection, and logs for exposed assets
• Track exceptions and retest remediated assets

Evidence notes

The CVE record and source item provide details on the flaw in clevis, but do not specify affected versions or explicit remediation steps. The vulnerability is identified as CVE-2026-109969, and the source item is from cve_program_cvelist_v5. The official CVE Program record and NIST NVD detail page offer additional information. However, the current evidence is limited, and defenders should verify the affected scope, severity, and vendor guidance. The evidence limits and unknown affected scope require further verification.

Sources and references

Methodology and review provenance

AI-assisted synthesis based on stored public vulnerability evidence. System validation, approval state, and publication status do not by themselves establish human review of this revision. PatchSiren helps prioritize defensive review and does not prove exposure or remediation on any system.