CVE-2026-12542 — Red Hat
MEDIUMCVE-2026-12542 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) OS Command Injection vulnerability. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
A flaw was found in Foreman. The foreman-tail utility is vulnerable to OS command injection due to the unsafe use of the eval command. The script takes user-supplied arguments and incorporates…
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-12542 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 390,400 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
A flaw was found in Foreman. The foreman-tail utility is vulnerable to OS command injection due to the unsafe use of the eval command. The script takes user-supplied arguments and incorporates them directly into a string that is then executed by eval to expand file paths. Because the input is not sanitized or quoted, a local attacker can inject shell metacharacters (e.g., ;, &, |) to execute arbitrary system commands.
Affected Products
satelliteredhatforemantheforemanDetection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2026-12542 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Successful exploitation of this issue allows a local attacker to escape restricted shells and execute arbitrary commands on the Satellite server. Consequently, the attacker could access sensitive information that could lead to remote code execution (RCE) and lateral movement across the managed infrastructure.
Red Hat has investigated whether a possible mitigation exists for this issue, and has not been able to identify a practical example. Please update the affected package as soon as possible.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-12542 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Satellite 6.16 for RHEL 8 | foreman-0:3.12.0.23-1.el8sat | RHSA-2026:74506 |
| Red Hat Satellite 6.17 for RHEL 9 | foreman-0:3.14.0.22-1.el9sat | RHSA-2026:74505 |
| Red Hat Satellite 6.18 for RHEL 9 | foreman-0:3.16.0.25-1.el9sat | RHSA-2026:74504 |
| Red Hat Satellite 6.19 for RHEL 9 | foreman-0:3.18.0.14-1.el9sat | RHSA-2026:74503 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-12542 in your dependencies?
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