Improper Privilege Management Affecting rhcos package, versions *


Severity

Recommended
low

Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux security rating.

Threat Intelligence

Exploit Maturity
Proof of Concept
EPSS
0.01% (1st percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-RHEL9-RHCOS-16759109
  • published19 May 2026
  • disclosed15 May 2026

Introduced: 15 May 2026

NewCVE-2026-46333  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-269  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

There is no fixed version for RHEL:9 rhcos.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream rhcos package and not the rhcos package as distributed by RHEL. See How to fix? for RHEL:9 relevant fixed versions and status.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ptrace: slightly saner 'get_dumpable()' logic

The 'dumpability' of a task is fundamentally about the memory image of the task - the concept comes from whether it can core dump or not - and makes no sense when you don't have an associated mm.

And almost all users do in fact use it only for the case where the task has a mm pointer.

But we have one odd special case: ptrace_may_access() uses 'dumpable' to check various other things entirely independently of the MM (typically explicitly using flags like PTRACE_MODE_READ_FSCREDS). Including for threads that no longer have a VM (and maybe never did, like most kernel threads).

It's not what this flag was designed for, but it is what it is.

The ptrace code does check that the uid/gid matches, so you do have to be uid-0 to see kernel thread details, but this means that the traditional "drop capabilities" model doesn't make any difference for this all.

Make it all make a bit more sense by saying that if you don't have a MM pointer, we'll use a cached "last dumpability" flag if the thread ever had a MM (it will be zero for kernel threads since it is never set), and require a proper CAP_SYS_PTRACE capability to override.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1