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CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root

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Re: CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root

#71

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

someothherguyy wrote: post #57
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best discussion I can find for the official reasons for switching is https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/carefully-but-purposefully-ox... - > But… why? > Performance is a frequently cited rationale for “Rewrite it in Rust” projects. While performance is high on my list of priorities, it’s not the primary driver behind this change. These utilities are at the heart of the distribution - and it’s the enhanced resilience…

probably because many of those tools were around for 20ish years before 2005

Could be. The thing is, it kinda doesn't matter; what matters is, what will result in the least bugs/vulnerabilities now? To which I argue the answer is, keeping GNU coreutils. I don't care that they have a head start, I care that they're ahead.

Re: CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root

#72

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

NekkoDroid wrote: post #36
charcircuit wrote: post #12

When will these distros accept suid was a mistake and disable it. It has lead to critical local privilege escalation exploits so many times.

Probably never for package based distros. I could see it happening for image based distros, where systemd is slowly but surely providing all the building blocks for. It has had the option for `NoNewPrivileges=` in the `system.conf` since v239, so it isn't exactly difficult to disable for the entire system. Though you'd be surprised how many binaries are suid binaries while they probably shouldn't be (passwd, mount, g…

> how many binaries are suid binaries while they probably shouldn't be (passwd

I would expect an unprivileged user to be able to change their own password. How else would that work?

Re: CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root

#73

Post by TZubiri »

stevenhuang wrote: post #70
TZubiri wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yeah we get it you don't like rust and you want everyone to know how weird you are by tearing down asinine arguments no one actually made. How boring.

[flagged]

Re: CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root

#75

Post by stevenhuang »

TZubiri wrote: post #73
stevenhuang wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah we get it you don't like rust and you want everyone to know how weird you are by tearing down asinine arguments no one actually made. How boring.

[flagged]

> based on ignorance and naivety.

About as nuanced as your bait framing of what a mere language ought/can do. Oh you're a python backend developer, guess that explains it.

Re: CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root

#76

Post by kam »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #72
NekkoDroid wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably never for package based distros. I could see it happening for image based distros, where systemd is slowly but surely providing all the building blocks for. It has had the option for `NoNewPrivileges=` in the `system.conf` since v239, so it isn't exactly difficult to disable for the entire system. Though you'd be surprised how many binaries are suid binaries while they probably shouldn't be (passwd, mount, g…

> how many binaries are suid binaries while they probably shouldn't be (passwd I would expect an unprivileged user to be able to change their own password. How else would that work?

Send a message to a socket-activated daemon running as a UID with write access to the password database.

Re: CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root

#77

Post by usr1106 »

I don't like snap and have always uninstalled it in the past. However, that gets more difficult in newer releases, so probably not a sustainable path. Still searching for the distro I could install instead of Xubuntu for friends and family who don't want or need the latest and greatest.

The main reason for my dislike is the closed source nature of snap distribution. App isolation is important and not easy. That bugs will happen and be fixed there is natural. Happens with every other system that was supposed to increase security, too.

Re: CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root

#78

Post by lifeisstillgood »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #71
someothherguyy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably because many of those tools were around for 20ish years before 2005

Could be. The thing is, it kinda doesn't matter; what matters is, what will result in the least bugs/vulnerabilities now? To which I argue the answer is, keeping GNU coreutils. I don't care that they have a head start, I care that they're ahead.

>>> I don't care that they have a head start, I care that they're ahead.

Nice

Re: CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root

#79

Post by fc417fc802 »

nine_k wrote: post #65
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that cheeky "oh btw, there's also another vulnerability in rust coreutils rewrite, but we aren't talking about that" paragraph

But this vulnerability is enabled by a very creative exploitation of the complicated bind mounting scheme used by snap-confine. Just reading about these mounts between /usr/lib to /tmp and back triggered my sense of a potential security vulnerability.

Slightly tangential but I never ended up switching to nix (or guix) precisely because I don't fully understand the theory behind why things were done the way they were done and where the security boundaries are supposed to lie relative to a "regular" distro. I found plenty of prescriptive documentation giving me recipes to do anything I might be interested in doing but not much in the way of design documents explaining the system itself.

I never asked around so maybe that's on me. Debian works just fine though and containers are (usually) simple enough for me to wrap my head around.

I didn't end up using Flatpak for the same reason.

Re: CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root

#80

Post by throwa356262 »

usr1106 wrote: post #77

I don't like snap and have always uninstalled it in the past. However, that gets more difficult in newer releases, so probably not a sustainable path. Still searching for the distro I could install instead of Xubuntu for friends and family who don't want or need the latest and greatest. The main reason for my dislike is the closed source nature of snap distribution. App isolation is important and not easy. That bugs…

I love multipass. It is a simple no BS virtualization solution and probably the best thing to come out of Ubuntu after LXD.

But I can't use it. You know why? Because despite being open source Canonical wont tell you how to compile it and install it as a standalone program. Instead all their documentation says "install via snap"... even if your are on fedora or debian or arch:

https://github.com/canonical/multipass

Snap needs to die, it is hurting everybody including canonical

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