CVE-2026-24061

Publication date 21 January 2026

Last updated 18 February 2026

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

telnetd in GNU Inetutils through 2.7 allows remote authentication bypass via a "-f root" value for the USER environment variable.

Read the notes from the security team

Why is this CVE high priority?

remote auth bypass

Learn more about Ubuntu priority

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
inetutils	25.10 questing	Fixed 2:2.6-1ubuntu3.1
	24.04 LTS noble	Fixed 2:2.5-3ubuntu4.1
	22.04 LTS jammy	Fixed 2:2.2-2ubuntu0.2
	20.04 LTS focal	Fixed 2:1.9.4-11ubuntu0.2+esm3
	18.04 LTS bionic	Fixed 2:1.9.4-3ubuntu0.1+esm4
	16.04 LTS xenial	Fixed 2:1.9.4-1ubuntu0.1~esm5
	14.04 LTS trusty	Not affected

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Notes

mdeslaur

This vulnerability is in the telnetd server. telnetd is insecure by design and it is highly recommended to not use it. The inetutils-telnetd package is in universe.

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
inetutils	Upstream: fd702c0 Upstream: ccba9f7

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	9.8 · Critical
Attack vector	Network
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	None
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	High
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	High
Vector	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H