CVE-2026-24061
Actively exploited. CVE-2026-24061 is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2026-01-26) — exploitation has been observed in the wild, and US federal agencies are required to remediate it under BOD 22-01. Treat patching as urgent.
Public exploit code is available. Proof-of-concept or working exploit code for CVE-2026-24061 is indexed in Metasploit, Exploit-DB and GitHub PoC. Expect opportunistic scanning and exploitation attempts — prioritize remediation.
GNU InetUtils contains an argument injection vulnerability in telnetd that could allow for remote authentication bypass via a "-f root" value for the USER environment variable.
CSIRTS triage
- What
- An argument injection vulnerability in telnetd could allow remote authentication bypass.
- Who is affected
- Deployments of GNU InetUtils are affected.
- Urgency
- Remediation is urgent as the vulnerability is actively exploited and critical in severity.
- Action
- Update to the latest version of GNU InetUtils.
AI-assisted analysis generated from the source advisory — verify against the original.
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Exploitation outlook
- Exploitation confirmedAlready exploited in the wild (CISA KEV) — the prediction phase is over. Patch now. Riskier than 100% of all EPSS-scored CVEs.
Exploit availability
Public exploit or proof-of-concept code for CVE-2026-24061 is indexed in these free datasets. Available exploit code raises real-world risk independent of the CVSS score.
- MetasploitA Metasploit Framework module targets this CVE — weaponized, point-and-click exploitation.look it up ↗
- Exploit-DBA public exploit is published in the Exploit-DB archive.look it up ↗
- GitHub PoCPublic proof-of-concept repositories on GitHub reference this CVE.look it up ↗
Advisory coverage (1)
- criticalexploitedCVE-2026-24061: GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Vulnerabilitycisa-kev · 2026-01-26
External references
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