CVE-2026-41489
HighSummary
Pi-hole, a DNS sinkhole system, has a vulnerability in shell scripts that perform file operations with root privileges without validating paths. An attacker with Pi-hole privileges can exploit this flaw to escalate privileges to root by manipulating SSH keys.
Risk Assessment
The organization may be exposed to local privilege escalation, potentially leading to unauthorized access to the system and malicious actions.
Recommendation
It is recommended to upgrade to Core 6.4.2 and FTL 6.6.1 to mitigate this vulnerability and review system configuration and permissions.
Other vulnerabilities in Pi-hole
See all- CVE-2026-119336High
In Pi-hole from 6.4.2 until 6.5, the root-run updatecheck.sh cron job applies truncate -s 0 and chmod 644 to /etc/pihole/versions while following symbolic links in a directory owned by the pihole user. An attacker running as pihole can replace the path with a symlink so the scheduled root operations truncate or create an arbitrary root-owned file, or race them so chmod makes a sensitive target world-readable.
- CVE-2026-119335High
In Pi-hole prior to 6.5, getFTLPID() in utils.sh validates the pihole-owned /run/pihole-FTL.pid file with expr, rejecting only values whose first character is not a digit. An attacker with code execution as pihole can write a digit-prefixed arithmetic expression that Bash then evaluates as root, enabling command substitution execution.
- CVE-2026-119334Low
In Pi-hole prior to 6.5, gravity.sh checks file:// adlist readability with sudo -u pihole test -r but then allows curl, sometimes running as root, to normalize URL dot segments and open a different file. A pihole-readable decoy can therefore pass the check while curl reads a root-only target, and /proc/self paths can similarly resolve against different processes.
- CVE-2026-50130High
A vulnerability in Pi-hole versions 6.0 to 6.4.2 allows a user with code execution as the unprivileged pihole user to escalate privileges to root by replacing the /etc/pihole/logrotate file. The file is then processed by pihole-FTL-prestart.sh, which changes its ownership to root:root, and subsequently executed as root by the daily pihole flush cron, enabling arbitrary code execution with administrative privileges.
Original NVD description (English source)
Pi-hole is a DNS sinkhole that protects devices from unwanted content without installing any client-side software. From 6.0 to before Core 6.4.2 and FTL 6.6.1, two shell scripts executed as root by systemd (pihole-FTL-prestart.sh and pihole-FTL-poststop.sh) read the files.pid path from this config without validation and use it in privileged file operations (install and rm -f). By writing an arbitrary path into files.pid, an attacker with pihole privilege can cause root to delete and then recreate any file on the system outside the ProtectSystem=full-restricted directories, gaining write access to it. On a default Pi-hole installation this yields local privilege escalation to root via SSH authorized keys manipulation. If /root/.ssh/authorized_keys does not exist (default on fresh installs), only ExecStartPre is required. If the file exists, ExecStopPost deletes it first, and the same restart triggers both hooks in sequence. This vulnerability is fixed in Core 6.4.2 and FTL 6.6.1.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS