Medium severity · published Jun 27, 2025
CVE-2025-52993
A race condition in the Nix, Lix, and Guix package managers enables changing the ownership of arbitrary files to the UID and GID of the build user (e.g., nixbld* or guixbuild*)
5.6
CVSS
0.1%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
A race condition in the Nix, Lix, and Guix package managers enables changing the ownership of arbitrary files to the UID and GID of the build user (e.g., nixbld* or guixbuild*). This affects Nix before 2.24.15, 2.26.4, 2.28.4, and 2.29.1; Lix before 2.91.2, 2.92.2, and 2.93.1; and Guix before 1.4.0-38.0e79d5b.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:L
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
Low
Scope
Changed
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.1% · higher than 3% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
NI
Nix · NixOS
before 2.24.15; 2.25.0 before 2.26.4; 2.27.0 before 2.28.4; 2.29.0 before 2.29.1 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-52993
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-52993
discourse.nixos.org
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/security-advisory-privilege-escalations-in-nix-lix-and-guix/66017
guix.gnu.org
https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2025/privilege-escalation-vulnerabilities-2025/
labs.snyk.io
https://labs.snyk.io
lix.systems
https://lix.systems/blog/2025-06-24-lix-cves/
security-tracker.debian.org
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2025-52993
security.snyk.io
https://security.snyk.io/vuln/?search=CVE-2025-52993
More from Nix
8.8
CVE-2024-45593
Nix affected by unsafe NAR unpacking
8.4
CVE-2026-39860
Nix sandbox escape: file write via symlink at FOD `.tmp` copy destination
8.0
CVE-2026-110450
Nix before 2.35.3 and Lix before 2.95.4 allow privilege escalation via a repair operation because it could destroy and then replace a store path before content verification
7.9
CVE-2025-53819
Nix's privilege dropping to build user broke for macOS
7.8
CVE-2019-17365
Nix through 2.3 allows local users to gain access to an arbitrary user's account because the parent directory of the user-profile directories is world writable