CVE-2026-96279: Flatpak: flatpak: path traversal issue in oci archive extraction via hardlinks

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-09-27 · updated 2026-09-29
Weakness: CWE-59

Description

A malicious OCI registry can hardlink arbitrary host files into the extraction directory when a user installs or updates a Flatpak application from an OCI remote, allowing disclosure of arbitrary host file contents. For system-wide installs running as root, this includes sensitive files such as /etc/shadow.

Affected products

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10: all versions

References

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-96279
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2539417
https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/security/advisories/GHSA-9rww-v4mm-x4jg

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