CVE-2026-23988 — Rufus has Local Privilege Escalation via TOCTOU Race Condition in Fido Script Handling
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…
Published: 2026-01-22 · CVSS: 7.3 · CVSS 3.1
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.
Source: CVE Program · Revision 8b16575c39f1e1810c5e863010da073d2d3285e7