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Privilege Escalation to Root in Lima QEMU Guests via World-Writable Agent Socket

IdentifiersCVE-2026-53657CWE-732

CVE-2026-53657 is a privilege-escalation vulnerability affecting Lima QEMU guests. Based on the provided content, the issue involves a world-writable agent socket within the Lima QEMU guest environment. This insecure permission model allows a local actor in the guest to interact with the agent socket in a way that can lead to escalation of privileges to root. Specific vulnerable functions, code paths, and implementation details are not available in the provided content.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

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Impact

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Successful exploitation allows privilege escalation to root within affected Lima QEMU guests. This can result in full administrative control of the guest system, including the ability to execute arbitrary commands as root, modify system configuration, access or alter sensitive data, install persistence mechanisms, and disable or evade security controls within the guest.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

If immediate remediation details are not yet available, restrict permissions on the affected agent socket so it is not world-writable, limit local access to untrusted users within Lima QEMU guests, and monitor for unauthorized interaction with the agent socket. Apply vendor fixes or updated Lima components once available.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

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VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

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Threat actor evidence

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Associated malware

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Detection signatures

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Vendor-by-vendor mapping

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Social activity7

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