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National Vulnerability Database

National Vulnerability Database

NVD

National Vulnerability Database
  1. Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-41489 Detail

Description

Pi-hole is a DNS sinkhole that protects devices from unwanted content without installing any client-side software. From 6.0 to before Core 6.4.2 and FTL 6.6.1, two shell scripts executed as root by systemd (pihole-FTL-prestart.sh and pihole-FTL-poststop.sh) read the files.pid path from this config without validation and use it in privileged file operations (install and rm -f). By writing an arbitrary path into files.pid, an attacker with pihole privilege can cause root to delete and then recreate any file on the system outside the ProtectSystem=full-restricted directories, gaining write access to it. On a default Pi-hole installation this yields local privilege escalation to root via SSH authorized keys manipulation. If /root/.ssh/authorized_keys does not exist (default on fresh installs), only ExecStartPre is required. If the file exists, ExecStopPost deletes it first, and the same restart triggers both hooks in sequence. This vulnerability is fixed in Core 6.4.2 and FTL 6.6.1.


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/pi-hole/pi-hole/security/advisories/GHSA-6w8x-p785-6pm4 GitHub, Inc.

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-15 External Control of System or Configuration Setting GitHub, Inc.  
CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management GitHub, Inc.  
CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource GitHub, Inc.  

Change History

1 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2026-41489
NVD Published Date:
05/11/2026
NVD Last Modified:
05/11/2026
Source:
GitHub, Inc.