Vulnerability details

CVE-2026-54161

networkupstools nut

upsmon: remote OS command injection (RCE) via attacker-controlled ups.alarm in NOTIFYCMD execution

CVSS 3.1
8.1High

Official description

Network UPS Tools is a collection of programs which provide a common interface for monitoring and administering UPS, PDU and SCD hardware. From 2.8.3 to 2.8.5, upsmon in clients/upsmon.c inserts the server-supplied ups.alarm value into shell commands executed by notify(), async_notify(), and wall(). When a monitored device reports an ALARM state and an operator has configured NOTIFYCMD with EXEC in NOTIFYFLAG ALARM, shell metacharacters in the alarm text are evaluated on POSIX or Windows and can execute arbitrary operating-system commands as the upsmon account, which is commonly root. An attacker can control the value through a malicious or compromised upsd, a man-in-the-middle on a plaintext upsd to upsmon connection, or a compromised UPS device whose driver supplies the alarm upstream of upsd; TLS between upsd and upsmon does not mitigate the compromised-device path. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.8.6.

CVSS scores

ScoreVersionSourceVector
8.1High 3.1 CVEProject cvelistV5 (CNA) (GitHub_M) CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

VendorProductVersionsSource
networkupstools nut >= 2.8.3, <= 2.8.5 CVEProject cvelistV5 (CNA)

References and advisories

6
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Details

Published
2026-11-03
Last updated
2026-11-04
State
Published
Assigner (CNA)
GitHub_M

Exploit prediction (EPSS)

0.64%
Probability of exploitation in 30 days
51%
Percentile (among all CVEs)

SSVC assessment (CISA)

Automatable
No
Exploitation
None
Technical impact
Total

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-78
    Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection')