What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-35339: uutils coreutils chmod False Success Exit Code in Recursive Mode

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-04-22 · updated 2026-10-26
• Weakness: CWE-253

Description

The recursive mode (-R) of the chmod utility in uutils coreutils incorrectly handles exit codes when processing multiple files. The final return value is determined solely by the success or failure of the last file processed. This allows the command to return an exit code of 0 (success) even if errors were encountered on previous files, such as 'Operation not permitted'. Scripts relying on these exit codes may proceed under a false sense of success while sensitive files remain with restrictive or incorrect permissions.

Affected products

• Uutils coreutils: before 0.6.0 — fixed in 0.6.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Uutils coreutils 0.6.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/pull/9793
• https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/releases/tag/0.6.0

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