# CVE-2026-109518: APT RCE via hard link reuse

> CVE-2026-109518: APT RCE via hard link reuse. CVSS 7.7 (CVSS 4.0).

Canonical: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2026-109518
Last updated: 2026-11-05T05:18:19Z

- Published: 2026-11-04 15:49 UTC · Updated: 2026-11-05 05:18 UTC · Assigner: canonical
- CVSS: 7.7 (CVSS 4.0) · Severity: High
- EPSS: 0.93%, 61th percentile (scored 2026-11-10)
- CISA KEV: no
- CWE: CWE-367, CWE-62

## Description

On Debian, Ubuntu, and derivative Linux distributions, an on-path attacker who can manipulate the HTTP traffic (including a malicious mirror or proxy) between an APT client and an archive server triggered by a package install can trick the client into installing an attacker-controlled unverified package and achieve remote code execution with root privileges. The vulnerability is caused by the reuse of hard links and requires the client to follow redirects and retry the download of package files. It requires the client to have a non-zero Acquire::Retries configuration setting; the value 3 is the default starting with Debian 12 (bookworm) and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish), so older releases are unaffected in a default configuration

## Affected vendors and products

- Debian: APT
- Ubuntu: APT

## Tracked companies

- [Amazon Web Services](https://rewindex.com/company/aws.md)

## References

- [CVE record on cve.org](https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-109518)
- [NVD entry](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-109518)
- [https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2026/msg00526.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2026/msg00526.html)
- [https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8996-1](https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8996-1)

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_Sources: CVE records from the CVE Program (cve.org). CVE® is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. (https://www.cve.org/) This product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. (https://nvd.nist.gov/) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog from CISA. (https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog) EPSS scores from FIRST (Exploit Prediction Scoring System). (https://www.first.org/epss/)_


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Canonical: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2026-109518 · Markdown: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2026-109518.md · JSON: https://rewindex.com/api/v1/cves/CVE-2026-109518 · Data licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) · Generated 2026-11-11T04:21:51.438Z