# CVE-2026-48985

> pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary removable media. In versions 0.9.1 and below, pusb_is_loginctl_local() can cause a NULL dereference crash when parsing loginctl output. The function calls popen() and reads the result; if the Remote field is only a newline, fgets() succeeds but strtok_r(buf, "\n", &saveptr) returns NULL. A subsequent strcmp(is_remote, "no") then dereferences NULL, causing undefined behavior (typically SIGSEGV) and crashing the PAM module. This can crash the authenticating process (e.g., sudo, login) and, depending on PAM stack configuration, den

- **CVSS:** 5.5 (MEDIUM)
- **CWE:** CWE-476

Canonical: https://intel.threadlinqs.com/cve/CVE-2026-48985
Full threat coverage + IOCs via the Threadlinqs MCP server (Purple tier): https://intel.threadlinqs.com/mcp