Is CVE-2026-12080 exploited in the wild?

No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-12080 being exploited in the wild.

How severe is CVE-2026-12080?

High severity, with a CVSS score of 7.3, published 20 July 2026.

Is there a fix for CVE-2026-12080?

No fixed version is recorded yet. Check the vendor's advisory in the references below. If you run it, Junglewise drafts a mitigation that fits your setup and applies it once you approve, with senior security engineers behind it.

How is CVE-2026-12080 attacked?

It is attacked with local access, in a software library.

Am I affected by CVE-2026-12080?

Check whether you run QEMU Guest Agent at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.

CVE-2026-12080: QEMU Guest Agent privilege escalation in guest-ssh-add-authorized-keys

CVE-2026-12080 · Severity: high · CVSS 7.3 · Published 2026-07-20

A security flaw has been identified in the QEMU Guest Agent, a background service used to manage virtual machines from a host server. A local user on a virtual machine could trick the system into changing the ownership of sensitive system files by using symbolic links. If successful, this allows a standard user to gain full administrative (root) control over the virtual machine, potentially leading to data theft or system disruption.

Vendors: Qemu.

Quick answers

Is CVE-2026-12080 exploited in the wild?: No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-12080 being exploited in the wild.
How severe is CVE-2026-12080?: High severity, with a CVSS score of 7.3, published 20 July 2026.
Which products and versions are affected?: QEMU Guest Agent unspecified.
Is there a fix for CVE-2026-12080?: No fixed version is recorded yet. Check the vendor's advisory in the references below. If you run it, Junglewise drafts a mitigation that fits your setup and applies it once you approve, with senior security engineers behind it.
How is CVE-2026-12080 attacked?: It is attacked with local access, in a software library.
Am I affected by CVE-2026-12080?: Check whether you run QEMU Guest Agent at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.

Technical details

A flaw exists in the 'guest-ssh-add-authorized-keys' command handler of the QEMU Guest Agent (qga). The root-privileged agent performs directory checks that follow symbolic links and uses 'chown' instead of 'lchown' when managing a user's .ssh directory and authorized_keys file. A local unprivileged user can exploit this via a deterministic directory-symlink bypass or a Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) race condition. By pre-staging these paths as symlinks, the attacker can force the agent to transfer ownership of arbitrary root-owned files to the attacker's account. This requires an external management layer like libvirt to trigger the affected code path.

Affected products

QEMU QEMU Guest Agent unspecified
Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 affected
Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 affected
Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 affected
Red Hat Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 affected

Timeline

2026-07-13: disclosed: Initial report in Red Hat Bugzilla
2026-07-20: advisory: NVD publication date

References

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