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CVE-2026-23988 Detail

Description

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.


Metrics

NVD enrichment efforts reference publicly available information to associate vector strings. CVSS information contributed by other sources is also displayed.
CVSS 4.0 Severity and Vector Strings:

NIST CVSS score
NIST: NVD
N/A
NVD assessment not yet provided.

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

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URL Source(s) Tag(s)
https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/commit/460cc5768aa45be07941b9e4ebc9bee02d282873 GitHub, Inc.
https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/releases/tag/v4.12_BETA GitHub, Inc.
https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/security/advisories/GHSA-hcx5-hrhj-xhq9 GitHub, Inc.

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition GitHub, Inc.  

Change History

1 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2026-23988
NVD Published Date:
01/22/2026
NVD Last Modified:
01/22/2026
Source:
GitHub, Inc.