CVE-2026-101045: Fleet Homebrew Cask OS Command Injection via Metadata

Severity: high (CVSS 8.0 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-09-27 · updated 2026-09-30
Weakness: CWE-78

Description

Fleet-maintained app install and uninstall scripts for macOS are generated from Homebrew cask metadata. In manifests generated before 2026-08-19, the script generator escaped this metadata at some interpolation sites but not all of them, so cask metadata containing shell metacharacters (for example $(...) command substitution) could be carried into scripts that execute as root on managed macOS hosts. An attacker who could land crafted metadata in an upstream Homebrew cask — without needing any Fleet credentials — could achieve arbitrary command execution as root on managed macOS hosts that install or uninstall the affected Fleet-maintained app; exploitation required the crafted metadata to pass both upstream Homebrew cask review and Fleet's review of the automated ingestion pull request. The fix (fleetdm/fleet#51324) landed in Fleet's ingestion pipeline on 2026-08-19 so that all manifests generated on or after that date escape cask metadata at every interpolation site; because manifests are generated centrally and distributed as pre-built content, remediation applied to all deployments with no customer action, and the code fix is included in Fleet v4.92.0.

Affected products

fleetdm fleet: before 2026-08-19 — fixed in 2026-08-19

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: fleetdm fleet 2026-08-19. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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