CVE-2026-85649
(Holloway) Chew, Kean Ho's Actualizer v1.2.0 and earlier contains a fail-open password validation vulnerability in the Alpha user and root…
- Published
- Updated
- Reserved
- Assigned by
- CIRCL
Description
(Holloway) Chew, Kean Ho's Actualizer v1.2.0 and earlier contains a fail-open password validation vulnerability in the Alpha user and root user password loops of Shell/debian-minbase-install.sh. The installer invokes mkpasswd to generate yescrypt password hashes but does not check the command's return value and unconditionally accepts the result. If mkpasswd fails to generate a yescrypt hash, for example because an incompatible mkpasswd implementation or an environment without yescrypt support is used, the resulting password hash variable can be empty and the build proceeds. The resulting image can therefore contain empty password fields for the root and alpha accounts, potentially permitting passwordless authentication depending on the authentication configuration.
Timeline
ID reserved
By CIRCL
Published
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| CIRCLCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | High7.9 | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N |
| NVDNVD · Awaiting Analysis | 3.1 | High7.9 | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.20% · top 90% of all CVEs (7 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 7.9.
Weakness
Affected products
chewkeanho · software-actualizer
- affected ≤ 1.2.0
What to do
Solution: Upgrade to Actualizer v1.2.1 or later. The fixed version validates that the generated password hash has the expected yescrypt prefix and performs a pre-flight check for yescrypt support before building.
References (4)
- https://github.com/ChewKeanHo/software-actualizer/releases/tag/v1.2.1 (opens in a new tab)release-notespatch
- https://github.com/ChewKeanHo/software-actualizer/commit/50a0932ac705635d9af62955c353e7c6df003a61.patch (opens in a new tab)patch
- https://github.com/ChewKeanHo/software-actualizer/blob/v1.2.0/Shell/debian-minbase-install.sh#L788 (opens in a new tab)
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22169659 (opens in a new tab)technical-description
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
[](https://trackcve.app/cve/CVE-2026-85649)Record last updated .