Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-68766 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-68766 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-68766?
- High severity, with a CVSS score of 7.8, published 22 August 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Hashcat prior to patch for CVE-2026-68766.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-68766?
- 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-2026-68766 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-68766?
- Check whether you run Hashcat 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 vulnerability is a command injection flaw in hashcat's restore file parser that fails to validate or restrict command-line options when reconstructing the original command from a saved restore state. An attacker can craft a restore file containing malicious options like --outfile or --potfile-path with attacker-controlled paths and content. When hashcat parses and reconstructs the command from the restore file, it does not sanitize these options, allowing the attacker to write arbitrary content to files, including shell startup files (.bashrc, .profile, etc.), resulting in arbitrary code execution. The attack requires the victim to process a malicious restore file, but requires no authentication or special privileges from hashcat itself.
Affected products
- hashcat hashcat prior to patch for CVE-2026-68766
Timeline
- 2026-08-22: disclosed
- 2026-08-22: advisory: CVE-2026-68766 published