Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-94574 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-94574 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-94574?
- High severity, with a CVSS score of 7.8, published 22 September 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Gnu Wget 1.21.4 and possibly earlier Windows builds from eternallybored.org.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-94574?
- 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-2026-94574 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-94574?
- Check whether you run Gnu Wget 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 stems from wget hardcoding a system-wide configuration file path (C:\msys64\qemu\opt\misc\etc\wgetrc) that can be created by any unprivileged user on Windows, exploiting the world-writable root directory permissions. An attacker can plant a malicious wgetrc with the use_askpass directive to execute arbitrary commands when wget is invoked by another user. This is a local cross-user privilege escalation vector affecting Windows-specific builds.
Affected products
- GNU wget 1.21.4 and possibly earlier Windows builds from eternallybored.org
Timeline
- 2026-09-22: disclosed