Threats affecting pkg:github/pbatard/rufus

CVE-2026-23988 is a high-severity TOCTOU race condition vulnerability in Rufus versions 4.11 and below. Rufus, a popular utility for creating bootable USB drives, runs with Administrator privileges but writes a PowerShell script to the user-writable %TEMP% directory without proper file locking. This allows a local attacker to replace the legitimate script with a malicious one between the write and execution steps, leading to arbitrary code execution with elevated privileges. The vulnerability requires local access and some user interaction but can result in full system compromise. It has been fixed in version 4.12_BETA. No known exploits are currently reported in the wild. European organizations using vulnerable Rufus versions on Windows systems are at risk, especially those with shared or multi-user environments. Mitigation involves upgrading Rufus to 4.