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CVE-2025-14282

Dropbear: privilege escalation via unix domain socket forwardings

Published: Feb 12, 2026Updated: Feb 18, 2026 Sources: CVE List NVDCWE-266
5.4MEDIUM
NVD MITRE
EPSS Score
0.4%
Top 70.5%
CISA KEV
Not in KEV
Exploits
No Known Exploits
Remediation
Workaround Only
Self-Check
OpenVAS

Description

A flaw was found in Dropbear. When running in multi-user mode and authenticating users, the dropbear ssh server does the socket forwardings requested by the remote client as root, only switching to the logged-in user upon spawning a shell or performing some operations like reading the user's files. With the recent ability of also using unix domain sockets as the forwarding destination any user able to log in via ssh can connect to any unix socket with the root's credentials, bypassing both file system restrictions and any SO_PEERCRED / SO_PASSCRED checks performed by the peer.

No summary for this CVE yet.

CVSS Vector Breakdown

AV:NAC:LPR:LUI:NS:UC:LI:LA:N
Exploitability
AV:NAttack Vector
Network
AC:LAttack Complexity
Low
PR:LPrivileges Required
Low
UI:NUser Interaction
None
Scope
S:UScope
Unchanged
Impact
C:LConfidentiality
Low
I:LIntegrity
Low
A:NAvailability
None
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Weaknesses

CWE-266

Affected Products

https://github.com/mkj/dropbear/
oss-projectaka dropbear
dropbearEmbedded
Security Products / secure-gateway-vpn

Exploitability

Workaround Available
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References

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-14282
access.redhat.com
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2420052
bugzilla.redhat.com
https://github.com/mkj/dropbear/pull/391
github.com
and 4 more references View all →

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