High severity · published Feb 6, 2026
CVE-2026-23740
Asterisk vulnerable to potential privilege escalation
7.8
CVSS
0.1%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Asterisk is an open source private branch exchange and telephony toolkit. Prior to versions 20.7-cert9, 20.18.2, 21.12.1, 22.8.2, and 23.2.2, when ast_coredumper writes its gdb init and output files to a directory that is world-writable (for example /tmp), an attacker with write permission(which is all users on a linux system) to that directory can cause root to execute arbitrary commands or overwrite arbitrary files by controlling the gdb init file and output paths. This issue has been patched in versions 20.7-cert9, 20.18.2, 21.12.1, 22.8.2, and 23.2.2.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
Required
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
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
AS
asterisk · asterisk
< 23.2.2; < 22.8.2; < 21.12.1; < 20.18.2; < 20.7-cert9 · source: vendor, NVD
CA
Certified Asterisk · Sangoma
13.13.0; 13.13.0; 13.13.0; 13.13.0; 13.13.0; 13.13.0; +34 more · source: NVD
Affected product
AS
asterisk
asterisk
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