CVE-2026-35385

A flaw was found in OpenSSH. When the scp command is used by a root user to download a file with the legacy protocol option (-O) and without preserving original file permissions (-p), the downloaded file can be installed with elevated privileges (setuid or setgid). This unexpected behavior could allow a malicious file to execute with higher permissions than intended, posing a security risk through potential privilege escalation.

This vulnerability is rated as an Important severity flaw because an untrusted remote system can deliver arbitrary setuid or setgid binaries to the local filesystem, resulting in root privilege escalation. Exploitation requires specific preconditions: an administrative user must run the file copy utility with root privileges while deliberately invoking the legacy transfer protocol and omitting preservation of file attributes. Because modern Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases utilize the SFTP-based backend by default, standard client invocations are not exposed unless backward-compatibility modes are explicitly enabled.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.