CVE-2026-16445

high

Published 2026-07-21 · Modified 2026-07-22

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CVSS v3

7.5

CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

7.5

Description

A flaw was found in dracut. A remote attacker on the adjacent network can exploit this vulnerability by providing specially crafted DHCP options, such as a malicious root-path, next-server, or bootfile name, to a system using dracut's NetworkManager-based initrd network module. These options are improperly handled and written into a temporary shell script without proper escaping, leading to command injection. This allows the attacker to achieve root code execution within the initramfs during system boot.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

73%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

References

CWEs

CWE-78

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.