CVE-2026-61898 — accountsservice: shell injection via attacker-controlled ~/.pam_environment in Ubuntu language helper scripts

Description (CNA)

The Ubuntu-specific language helper scripts (save-to-pam-env, update-langlist) shipped with accountsservice before 23.13.9-8ubuntu7 treat the user-controlled LANGUAGE entry in ~/.pam_environment as trusted input. The value is interpolated unescaped into a GNU sed replacement expression, allowing an attacker to inject a sed 'e' flag and arbitrary shell commands that execute with the privileges of the AccountsService helper process (real UID 0) via the SetLanguage D-Bus method.

Affected (CNA)

Vendor / product	Versions
Canonical / accountsservice	affected 22.07.5-2ubuntu1 before 22.07.5-2ubuntu1.6; affected 23.13.9-2ubuntu6 before 23.13.9-2ubuntu6.1; affected 23.13.9-8ubuntu5 before 23.13.9-8ubuntu5.2; affected 23.13.9-8ubuntu6 before 23.13.9-8ubuntu7

CWE

CWE-78

References

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/accountsservice/+bug/2157985
https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-61898

ADP enrichment

CISA-ADP

No English description supplied.

No references supplied.