Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-48980 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-48980 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-48980?
- Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 6.3, published 18 June 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Mcdope Pam Usb < 0.9.2.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-48980?
- A patch was published on 2026-05-23: Version 0.9.2 released Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2026-48980 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-48980?
- Check whether you run Mcdope Pam Usb 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
The pam_usb module incorrectly utilizes the getenv() function to retrieve environment variables such as XRDP_SESSION, DISPLAY, and TMUX to determine if a session is local or remote. Because PAM modules often execute within the context of setuid binaries (like sudo or su), a local attacker can manipulate the process environment to inject these variables. This reliance on untrusted inputs in a security decision (CWE-807) allows an attacker to influence the 'local-check' logic. The vulnerability is resolved in version 0.9.2 by replacing getenv() with secure_getenv(), which returns NULL when the effective UID does not match the real UID.
Affected products
- mcdope pam_usb < 0.9.2
Timeline
- 2026-05-23: patched: Version 0.9.2 released
- 2026-05-24: advisory: GitHub Security Advisory published
- 2026-06-18: disclosed: CVE-2026-48980 published to NVD