What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-8170: ExtremeXOS Privilege Escalation via Symlink Following in File Utilities
- Severity: high (CVSS 8.7 v4.0)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2026-07-20 · updated 2026-10-24
- Weakness: CWE-59
Description
The mv, cp, and rm file utilities exposed within the ExtremeXOS (EXOS) shell environment fail to safely canonicalize paths and follow symbolic links outside of the intended privilege boundary. An attacker with low-privilege CLI access can create a symbolic link that references a privileged filesystem location and then invoke the affected utilities to read, modify, or replace security-critical files outside of their authorized scope. Under certain conditions, this may enable escalation to root-level access and persistent modification of the device software stack. Exploitation is possible remotely by an attacker holding a low-privilege account, or locally via the serial console. Extreme would like to thank Hadrien Barral (Université Gustave Eiffel) and Georges-Axel Jaloyan (French Ministry of the Interior) for responsible disclosure of their findings.
Affected products
- Extreme Networks Switch Engine (EXOS): before 31.7.4; from 32.0.0 before 32.7.4.15; from 33.0.0 before 33.1.100; from 33.2.0 before 33.7.1 — fixed in 31.7.4, 32.7.4.15, 33.1.100, 33.7.1
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: Extreme Networks Switch Engine (EXOS) 31.7.4, 32.7.4.15, 33.1.100, 33.7.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
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