CVE-2026-48985

Severity CVSS v4.0:

Pending analysis

Type:

CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference

Publication date:

18/06/2026

Last modified:

22/06/2026

Description

pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary removable media. In versions 0.9.1 and below, pusb_is_loginctl_local() can cause a NULL dereference crash when parsing loginctl output. The function calls popen() and reads the result; if the Remote field is only a newline, fgets() succeeds but strtok_r(buf, "\n", &saveptr) returns NULL. A subsequent strcmp(is_remote, "no") then dereferences NULL, causing undefined behavior (typically SIGSEGV) and crashing the PAM module. This can crash the authenticating process (e.g., sudo, login) and, depending on PAM stack configuration, deny access for all users of the affected service. This issue has been fixed in version 0.9.2.

Impact

Vector 3.x

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H CVSS v3.1 Severity and Metrics:

Base Score: 5.50 MEDIUM
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector (AV): Local
Attack Complexity (AC): Low
Privileges Required (PR): Low
User Interaction (UI): None
Scope (S): Unchanged
Confidentiality (C): None
Integrity (I): None
Availability (A): High

Base Score 3.x

5.50

Severity 3.x

MEDIUM

CVE-2026-48985

Description

Impact

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools