Ubuntu fixes 3 flaws that could let attackers become admins
Age is no guarantee of security.
Ubuntu. By GettyImages
- Canonical fixed three Ubuntu Snap flaws, including two high-severity bugs that could let local attackers gain admin access.
- The most serious flaw, CVE-2026-8933, was found by Qualys and was introduced by a security hardening change.
- One medium-severity bug affected Ubuntu releases back to 16.04 LTS and could expose users’ hashed passwords.
- The flaws add pressure on Snap security after attackers used fake Snap Store apps, including one tied to a $500,000 theft.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Canonical has fixed security flaws in Ubuntu’s Snap packaging system that could allow a local attacker to gain full control of a vulnerable computer. One of the vulnerabilities had existed since 2016.
Snaps are universal Linux app packages developed by Canonical, the creators of Ubuntu. Unlike traditional Linux packages, these can be installed on any Linux distribution and can be downloaded from Canonical's Snap Store.
The flaws affect snapd, the service behind the packaging system, and include 2 high-severity privilege escalation bugs and a third vulnerability that affects Ubuntu releases going back to 16.04 LTS.
The most serious flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-8933, was discovered by Qualys researchers and allows an unprivileged local user to gain root privileges on affected systems.
Ironically, the vulnerability was unintentionally introduced by a “security hardening change” that was designed to reduce risk, according to Qualys.
The second high-severity flaw, CVE-2026-15226, allows an attacker to escape a restricted Snap container and access the host system.
The third bug, CVE-2024-5300, is rated medium and lets a sandboxed app read a user's hashed password. It affects all Ubuntu releases stretching back nearly a decade to 2016, making it the oldest of the 3 vulnerabilities.
Ghosts of the past
Canonical has shared details on how to check if your system is affected, along with instructions on how to fix it.
Earlier this year, attackers were caught uploading malicious packages disguised as legitimate software to the Snap Store in an attempt to infect Linux users.
In one case, a victim lost nearly $500,000 after downloading a fake cryptocurrency wallet app from the store. A privilege-escalation bug landing in the same ecosystem further undermines confidence in Snaps as a safe way to install software.
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But Snaps aren’t the only part of Linux under attack. Thanks to AI, serious bugs in the Linux kernel are surfacing at fairly frequent intervals.
Copy Fail, rooted in a 2017 kernel change, gave root access on nearly every mainstream Linux distro. It was discovered by an AI security-testing tool in about an hour.
Then there was GhostLock, which had remained hidden in the kernel since 2011, until an AI bug-hunting agent dug it out earlier this month.
While none of these bugs overlap with the Snap flaws, the pattern is hard to miss. Thanks to the new generation of AI-assisted scanning tools, mature pieces of software, open-source or not, are revealing long-hidden vulnerabilities.
