Vulnerability record · CVE-2026-47272 · published 27 May 2026
CVE-2026-47272: Improper authentication vulnerability
pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary removable media. Prior to 0.9.0, the pusb_pad_compare() function in src/pad.c only verified that the user-side pad (~/.pamusb/device.pad) could be read, but did not enforce that the system-side pad (the pad file on the USB device) was also present and readable. If the user-side pad was deleted or unreadable, the function returned a failure that was treated as non-fatal in certain code paths, allowing authentication to succeed without the USB device being verified. A local user can delete their own ~/.pamusb/device.pad to remove the USB device requirement and authenticate without the physical device. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.9.0.
Description
pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary removable media. Prior to 0.9.0, the pusb_pad_compare() function in src/pad.c only verified that the user-side pad (~/.pamusb/device.pad) could be read, but did not enforce that the system-side pad (the pad file on the USB device) was also present and readable. If the user-side pad was deleted or unreadable, the function returned a failure that was treated as non-fatal in certain code paths, allowing authentication to succeed without the USB device being verified. A local user can delete their own ~/.pamusb/device.pad to remove the USB device requirement and authenticate without the physical device. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.9.0.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
References
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Related vulnerabilities
Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2026-47272), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-26). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.