CVE-2026-54552: sh _uid does not drop supplementary groups (incomplete privilege drop)
The _uid option performed an incomplete privilege drop on Linux/Unix-like systems.
When sh was run from a process with elevated privileges, such as root, and a command was launched with _uid=<unprivileged user>, the child process changed its UID and primary GID but did not reset its supplementary groups. As a result, the child process could retain the parent process’s supplementary groups, potentially including privileged groups such as root, docker, disk, shadow, or sudo.
This could allow a subprocess that was expected to run with reduced privileges to access files or resources available to the original process’s supplementary groups. Users are impacted if they rely on _uid as a privilege boundary when launching commands from a privileged parent process.
References
Code Behaviors & Features
Detect and mitigate CVE-2026-54552 with GitLab Dependency Scanning
Secure your software supply chain by verifying that all open source dependencies used in your projects contain no disclosed vulnerabilities. Dependency Scanning using SBOM also detects vulnerabilities from proprietary advisories that this site does not include. Learn more about Dependency Scanning using SBOM →