Description
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.
Published: 2026-07-15
Score: 6.1 Medium
EPSS: < 1% Very Low
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
AI Analysis

Impact

A vulnerability in Samba's pam_winbind allows the mkhomedir feature to change ownership of the target account's home directory without verifying that the path is not a is system accounts) is used, even a non‑root user with limited sudo authority can trigger the chown, be altered. Since root ownership of / is required for normal system operation, this results in a severe denial of service, disabling SSH, sudo, and package management, but does not provide additional privilege escalation. The flaw is a CWE-732 weakness—Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource.

Affected Systems

The flaw affects Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions 6 through 10 that use Samba RHEL 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 enabled this feature are vulnerable, regardless of Samba version mentioned in the references.

Risk and Exploitability

The CVSS score of 6.1 reflects a moderate severity, and the EPSS score of less than 1% indicates a very low probability of exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog. The likely attack vector is a non‑root user with limited sudo authority that can run commands as a system account with a home directory of /. This inference is drawn from the description, which notes that the flaw can be triggered by a non‑root user holding a narrow sudo delegation. Because the impact is loss of availability rather than elevation of privilege, an attacker would target services that depend on normal ownership of the root path, but the description does not explicitly state the attack vector.

Generated by OpenCVE AI on July 31, 2026 at 03:44 UTC.

Remediation

Vendor Workaround

Do not enable mkhomedir in pam_winbind.conf on systems where any account (including system accounts) may resolve to a home directory of / or another sensitive system path.


OpenCVE Recommended Actions

  • Disable mkhomedir in pam_winbind.conf on systems where any account may resolve to / or another sensitive system path.
  • Ensure that only privileged users are allowed to use system accounts with home directory /, and consider changing those accounts to a non‑critical path or removing them.
  • Apply any available Red Hat updates that fix the pam_winbind chown validation bug, and monitor the vendor’s advisories for future patches.

Generated by OpenCVE AI on July 31, 2026 at 03:44 UTC.

Tracking

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Advisories
Source ID Title
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-8621-1 Samba vulnerabilities
History

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 21:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Samba
Samba samba
Vendors & Products Samba
Samba samba

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
References
Metrics threat_severity

None

threat_severity

Moderate


Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}


Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description 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.
Title Samba-winbind: samba: pam_winbind mkhomedir chowns critical system paths without validation
First Time appeared Redhat
Redhat enterprise Linux
Weaknesses CWE-732
CPEs cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:10
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8
cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:9
Vendors & Products Redhat
Redhat enterprise Linux
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 6.1, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H'}


Subscriptions

Redhat Enterprise Linux
Samba Samba
cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: redhat

Published:

Updated: 2026-07-15T13:04:49.311Z

Reserved: 2026-07-14T18:33:36.712Z

Link: CVE-2026-15779

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2026-07-15T13:04:45.996Z

cve-icon NVD

No data.

cve-icon Redhat

Severity : Moderate

Publid Date: 2026-07-14T00:00:00Z

Links: CVE-2026-15779 - Bugzilla

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-08-02T20:36:28Z

Weaknesses
  • CWE-732

    Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource