CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2026-34990 — OpenPrinting CUPS is an open source printing system for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems

High CVSS 7.8

OpenPrinting CUPS is an open source printing system for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. In versions 2.4.16 and prior, a local unprivileged user can coerce cupsd into authenticating to an attacker-controlled localhost IPP service with a reusable Authorization: Local ... token. That token is enough to drive /admin/ requests on localhost, and the attacker can combine CUPS-Create-Local-Printer with printer-is-shared=true to persist a file:///... queue even though the normal FileDevice policy rejects such URIs. Printing to that queue gives an arbitrary root file overwrite; the PoC below uses that primitive to drop a sudoers fragment and demonstrate root command execution. At time of publication, there are no publicly available patches.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.1)
Published
2026-04-03
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-287

Affected products

  • openprinting / cups

Matched remediation archetype

Authentication bypass and missing authentication

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Check exposure

  • Map every affected endpoint and protocol path, including alternate ports, legacy routes, recovery flows, service accounts, and machine-to-machine access.
  • Confirm which deployments enable the affected authentication mode and whether the interface is reachable from untrusted networks.
  • Review session, token, credential, and proxy trust configuration without attempting account takeover.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and centralize fail-closed authentication before protected request handling.
  • Remove default or embedded credentials, rotate affected secrets and sessions, and bind authentication decisions to the intended audience and channel.
  • Add negative tests for alternate routes, malformed or absent credentials, recovery flows, and proxy-derived identity.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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