CVE-2026-40225 Details

A local privilege escalation vulnerability has been identified in the udev component of systemd, affecting versions prior to 260. This vulnerability allows unauthorized users to gain root access by exploiting unsanitized kernel output from malicious hardware devices. The issue arises in udev's helper binaries, 'scsi_id' and 'v4l_id', which parse input from the kernel. Malicious devices can craft specific properties that are sent to userspace without proper sanitization. For example, 'v4l_id' can be manipulated to execute a chosen file as root, while 'scsi_id' can be used to activate systemd units of the attacker's choice, potentially leading to unauthorized access or control.

Users can upgrade to systemd versions 260, 259.5, 258.7, or 257.13, all of which include patches for this vulnerability. Alternatively, the v4l and iscsi drivers can be disabled in the kernel.