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VulnerabilityCVE-2026-24061Published 2026-01-21

CVE-2026-24061 — Gnu Inetutils

criticalCISA KEVPublic exploit11 PoC repos

As of 2026-09-29, CVE-2026-24061 is a CRITICAL-severity vulnerability in Gnu Inetutils, CVSS v3.1 9.8, EPSS 98.9% (99.9th percentile). It is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2026-01-26), with a US federal remediation deadline of 2026-02-16. Threadlinqs Intelligence links 2 tracked threat campaigns to CVE-2026-24061, most recently “CVE-2026-32746: Pre-Auth BSS Buffer Overflow in GNU inetutils telnetd LINEMODE SLC Handling”.

CVSS v3.1
9.8/10Critical
EPSS
98.9%Higher than 99.9% of scored CVEs
CISA KEV
ListedAdded · due 2026-02-16
Tracked threats
2Campaigns referencing it
Priority
9/10Threadlinqs triage score
Published
Updated 2026-09-29
CVSS v3.1 9.8 (CRITICAL) · EPSS 98.9% (higher than 99.9% of all scored CVEs) · Priority 9/10 · Published 2026-01-21

Last updated:

What is CVE-2026-24061?

telnetd in GNU Inetutils through 2.7 allows remote authentication bypass via a "-f root" value for the USER environment variable.

The record classifies CVE-2026-24061 under weakness class CWE-88. Its CVSS v3 base vector states that the flaw is reachable remotely over the network, needs no prior authentication, needs no user interaction, and has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability. 2 affected-product entries are recorded, across 2 vendors, listed below. The identifier was first published 288 days ago.

Severity and exploitation probability

CVSS v3.1 base score
9.8 — CRITICAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS (FIRST)
98.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.9% of all scored CVEs
CISA KEV
Listed since 2026-01-26, federal remediation deadline 2026-02-16
Threadlinqs priority
9/10 — CISA KEV-listed, which Threadlinqs floors at 9
Published
2026-01-21, last modified 2026-09-29

Is CVE-2026-24061 being exploited?

CISA added CVE-2026-24061 to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-01-26, which means the agency holds evidence of exploitation in the wild; US federal civilian agencies had to remediate it by 2026-02-16 under BOD 22-01. Weaponised exploit code for CVE-2026-24061 is publicly available. 11 public proof-of-concept repositories are tracked for this identifier. It currently carries a trending score of 48 in the Threadlinqs vulnerability feed.

Affected products and versions

How to fix CVE-2026-24061

The record marks a vendor fix as available for CVE-2026-24061. Patch reference: https://codeberg.org/inetutils/inetutils/commit/fd702c02497b2f398e739e3119bed0b23dd7aa7b. Vendor advisory: https://codeberg.org/inetutils/inetutils/commit/ccba9f748aa8d50a38d7748e2e60362edd6a32cc. Because CVE-2026-24061 is KEV-listed, US federal civilian agencies were required to apply the vendor fix, or stop using the product, by 2026-02-16. Apply the vendor fix referenced above to every affected product listed in this record, then confirm the running version against the vendor advisory.

Threat activity tracking CVE-2026-24061

2 tracked threats in the Threadlinqs corpus reference CVE-2026-24061, either in the campaign’s CVE list or as an indicator on the campaign record.

Sources

Enriched from CVE.org, FIRST EPSS, CISA KEV, GitHub Security Advisories, public proof-of-concept repositories. Last verified by Threadlinqs on .

Other references

Showing 5 of 11 recorded references.