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Fencer Intel
high 7.3

CVE-2026-23988 json

Rufus has Local Privilege Escalation via TOCTOU Race Condition in Fido Script Handling

published 9mo ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2026-4202

cvss
7.3
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 10%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives. Versions 4.11 and below contain a race condition (TOCTOU) in src/net.c during the creation, validation, and execution of the Fido PowerShell script. Since Rufus runs with elevated privileges (Administrator) but writes the script to the %TEMP% directory (writeable by standard users) without locking the file, a local attacker can replace the legitimate script with a malicious one between the file write operation and the execution step. This allows arbitrary code execution with Administrator privileges. This issue has been fixed in version 4.12_BETA.

Patch / fix

  • akeo rufus 4.12_beta
  • rufus_project rufus 4.12_beta

Is CVE-2026-23988 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
9mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 10% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/security/advisories/GHSA-hcx5-hrhj-xhq9 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 3.1 7.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • pbatard rufus

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.