CVE-2026-23988
Rufus has Local Privilege Escalation via TOCTOU Race Condition in Fido Script Handling
- State
- Published
- Severity
- 7.3 High
- Published
- Jan 22, 2026
- Updated
- Jan 23, 2026
- Reserved
- Jan 19, 2026
Description
Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives. Versions 4.11 and below contain a race condition (TOCTOU) in src/net.c during the creation, validation, and execution of the Fido PowerShell script. Since Rufus runs with elevated privileges (Administrator) but writes the script to the %TEMP% directory (writeable by standard users) without locking the file, a local attacker can replace the legitimate script with a malicious one between the file write operation and the execution step. This allows arbitrary code execution with Administrator privileges. This issue has been fixed in version 4.12_BETA.
Scores
| CVSS | Score | Vector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | 7.3 High | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H | GitHub_M |
Weaknesses
- CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition
Affected Products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
rufuspbatard |
|
References
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