ExtremeXOS Privilege Escalation via Symlink Following in File Utilities

Description

The mv, cp, and rm file utilities exposed within the ExtremeXOS (EXOS) shell environment fail to safely canonicalize paths and follow symbolic links outside of the intended privilege boundary. An attacker with low-privilege CLI access can create a symbolic link that references a privileged filesystem location and then invoke the affected utilities to read, modify, or replace security-critical files outside of their authorized scope. Under certain conditions, this may enable escalation to root-level access and persistent modification of the device software stack. Exploitation is possible remotely by an attacker holding a low-privilege account, or locally via the serial console. Extreme would like to thank Hadrien Barral (Université Gustave Eiffel) and Georges-Axel Jaloyan (French Ministry of the Interior) for responsible disclosure of their findings.

Scores

EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)

0.56% · top 53% of all CVEs (6 Nov 2026)

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total

The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 8.7.

Weakness

• CWE-59: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access ('Link Following') (opens in a new tab)All about CWE-59 and its CVEs

Affected products

• Extreme Networks · Switch Engine (EXOS)

  • affected < 31.7.4
  • affected 32.0.0 – < 32.7.4.15
  • affected 33.0.0 – < 33.1.100
  • affected 33.2.0 – < 33.7.1

What to do

Solution: Extreme Networks has released fixed versions of Switch Engine (EXOS) that address this vulnerability. Customers should upgrade to one of the following releases or later: 31.7.4, 32.7.4.15, 33.1.100, or 33.7.1.

Workaround: Where immediate upgrade is not feasible, customers should: (1) restrict CLI access to trusted administrators only; (2) enforce strong authentication and rotate any default credentials; (3) restrict physical access to serial console ports; and (4) monitor device logs for anomalous shell activity and filesystem modifications.

References (1)

• Extreme Networks Product Security (opens in a new tab)

Sources

The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.

• CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
• CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
• NVD (opens in a new tab)
• FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
• OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
• GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
• CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)

Badge for a README or a ticket

[![CVE-2026-8170](https://trackcve.app/badge/CVE-2026-8170.svg)](https://trackcve.app/cve/CVE-2026-8170)

Record last updated 20 Jul 2026, 19:21 UTC.