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CVE-2026-23988

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CVE-2026-23988

Published: Jan 22, 2026

Modified: Jan 23, 2026

PUBLISHED

CVSS v3.1

7.3

HIGH

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.

VendorProductVersions

pbatard

rufus

affected
< 4.12_BETA

Weaknesses (CWE)

CVSS v3.1 Details

CVSS v3.1 Vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack Vector

Local

Attack Complexity

Low

Privileges Required

Low

User Interaction

Required

Scope

Unchanged

Confidentiality

High

Integrity

High

Availability

High

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