CVE-2026-15779
MediumCVSS 6.1Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk1th percentile - higher than 1% of all known CVEs
Summary
A flaw in Samba's pam_winbind, when mkhomedir is enabled, fails to validate the home directory path before chowning it. This allows a non-root user with narrow sudo delegation to change ownership of the root directory (/), causing severe denial of service (SSH, sudo, and package-manager failures) without granting write access.
Risk Assessment
The risk is that an attacker with limited sudo privileges can trigger ownership change of /, leading to complete loss of availability for critical services like SSH, sudo, and package managers, without privilege escalation.
Recommendation
Update Samba to a patched version immediately. As a workaround, disable mkhomedir in pam_winbind or restrict sudo delegations for system accounts with home directory set to /.
Other vulnerabilities in Samba
See all- CVE-2026-58222High
A vulnerability in Samba Active Directory Domain Controller (AD DC) combines LDAP filter injection with improper authorization checks, allowing an authenticated low-privilege domain user to disclose confidential AD attributes such as msKds-RootKeyData, potentially leading to privilege escalation and full domain compromise.
- CVE-2017-15275High
Samba before 4.7.3 might allow remote attackers to obtain sensitive information by leveraging failure of the server to clear allocated heap memory.
- CVE-2016-2119High
In Samba library versions 4.x before 4.2.14, 4.3.x before 4.3.11, and 4.4.x before 4.4.5, a vulnerability allows man-in-the-middle attackers to bypass a client-signing protection mechanism. This enables spoofing of SMB2 and SMB3 servers.
- CVE-2016-2113High
Samba versions 4.x before 4.2.11, 4.3.x before 4.3.8, and 4.4.x before 4.4.2 do not verify X.509 certificates from TLS servers, allowing man-in-the-middle attackers to spoof LDAPS and HTTPS servers and obtain sensitive information via a crafted certificate.
- CVE-2015-8467High
The samldb_check_user_account_control_acl function in Samba 4.x before 4.1.22, 4.2.x before 4.2.7, and 4.3.x before 4.3.3 does not properly check for administrative privileges during the creation of machine accounts. This allows remote authenticated users to bypass intended access restrictions.
- CVE-2015-5252High
In Samba versions 3.x and 4.x before 4.1.22, 4.2.x before 4.2.7, and 4.3.x before 4.3.3, a vulnerability allows remote attackers to bypass intended file-access restrictions via a symlink pointing outside of a share when certain substring relationships in share names exist.
- CVE-2015-0240High
The Netlogon server implementation in smbd in Samba 3.5.x and 3.6.x before 3.6.25, 4.0.x before 4.0.25, 4.1.x before 4.1.17, and 4.2.x before 4.2.0rc5 performs a free operation on an uninitialized stack pointer, allowing remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via crafted Netlogon packets.
- CVE-2014-8143High
Samba versions 4.0.x before 4.0.24, 4.1.x before 4.1.16, and 4.2.x before 4.2rc4, when an Active Directory Domain Controller (AD DC) is configured, allow remote authenticated users to set the LDB userAccountControl UF_SERVER_TRUST_ACCOUNT bit, consequently gaining privileges.
- CVE-2026-58221Medium
A low-privilege authenticated Samba AD user can modify internal LDB special DNs via LDAP access, enabling a domain takeover.
- CVE-2026-4408Critical
A flaw in Samba allows remote command execution due to improper escaping of shell meta-characters in the 'check password script' feature when using the %u substitution. This affects non-standard configurations with samba-dcerpcd running as a system service.
Original NVD description (English source)
A flaw was found in samba's pam_winbind. When mkhomedir is enabled, pam_winbind chowns the target account's home directory without validating the path is not a critical system directory such as /. On affected systems, accounts with / as their home directory (a common default for system accounts) can have this triggered not only by root, but by a non-root user holding a narrow sudo delegation to run commands as that account, causing ownership of / to change and resulting in severe denial of service (SSH, sudo, and package-manager failures). The change does not grant write access to / (which ships with restrictive 0555 permissions on RHEL), so the impact is availability loss rather than further privilege escalation.