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VulnerabilityPublished

CVE-2026-49237: Canonical Multipass · Incorrect Default Permissions

Affects Canonical MultipassSource CVE Database V5

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Mentioned vulnerabilities

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.8 High : upgrade to 1.16.3 soon.

Data as of 30 Oct 2026, 11:52 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score
7.8High
How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.
EPSS
0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 3% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch
Available – fixed in 1.16.3
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Exploitation evidence

  1. Disclosed: evidence found.

    CVE published 28 May 2026

  2. Detectable: no evidence on record.

    No public nuclei template indexed

  3. Weaponized: no evidence on record.

    No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB

  4. Exploited in the wild: no evidence on record.

    Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation

  5. Observed by OffSeq Mirage: no evidence on record.

    No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 30 Oct 2026.

What to do

Upgrade Multipass and canonical/multipass to 1.16.3.

Affected software

ProductAffectedFixed in
CanonicalMultipassAffected
  • <1.16.3
Fixed in
  • 1.16.3
GitHubcanonical/multipasspkg:github/canonical/multipassOther threatsAffected
  • <1.16.3
Fixed in
  • 1.16.3

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

If you cannot patch yet, restrict local user write permissions to the directory /Library/Application Support/com.canonical.multipass/bin/ and its binaries to prevent unauthorized modification.

Description

An issue was discovered in Canonical Multipass for macOS before version 1.16.3 due to an incomplete fix for CVE-2025-5199. While the patch in version 1.16.0 updated the ownership of the multipassd daemon binary to root:wheel, five co-located binaries (multipass, qemu-img, qemu-system-aarch64, qemu-system-x86_64, and sshfs_server) in /Library/Application Support/com.canonical.multipass/bin/ retain ownership by the installing user and remain writable. Because the root LaunchDaemon (com.canonical.multipassd.plist) configures a PATH environment variable that prioritizes this user-writable directory and invokes these auxiliary binaries by their bare names, a local attacker can replace an auxiliary binary (such as qemu-img) with a malicious wrapper. When the root daemon subsequently triggers the binary during routine execution (e.g., via multipass launch), the malicious code executes with root privileges, leading to local privilege escalation.

References

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