OS Command InjectionWeakness · CWE-78

CVE-2026-53790

HIGH · 8.1 CVSS v3.1 Published 2026-08-13
No fix yet
No fix has been published. The vendor has not shipped a fixed release or patch. You remain exposed.
See remediation →
90/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click 6 days old

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
rsync before 3.5.0 contains multiple command and argument injection vulnerabilities that allow attackers to execute arbitrary commands by supplying malicious input through several code paths, including the RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG environment variable, daemon hooks, the rsync-ssl wrapper, and remote-shell command newline injection. Attackers can inject shell metacharacters or newline characters into unsanitized user-supplied values such as hostnames and hostspecs to execute arbitrary commands under the privileges of the rsync process or the invoking user.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-78

User input reaches a shell or system command without being fully separated from the command itself, so an attacker can append their own instructions. Because these run with the application's privileges, it often means full control of the host. The lasting fix is to avoid the shell entirely — call APIs directly and pass arguments as data, never as concatenated strings.

General guidance for the os command injection class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Recommended fix Moderate confidence

rsync version 3.5.0 or later

  1. 1. Identify the current rsync version installed on the system using 'rsync --version' or 'rpm -q rsync' / 'dpkg -l rsync'
  2. 2. If the version is earlier than 3.5.0, upgrade rsync to version 3.5.0 or later
  3. 3. On Debian/Ubuntu-based systems: run 'sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install rsync'
  4. 4. On RHEL/CentOS-based systems: run 'sudo yum update rsync' or 'sudo dnf update rsync'
  5. 5. On macOS with Homebrew: run 'brew install rsync'
  6. 6. Verify the upgrade was successful by running 'rsync --version' and confirming the version is 3.5.0 or later
  7. 7. If using RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG environment variable, audit any scripts that set this variable to ensure no untrusted input is passed
Caveat rsync 3.5.0 introduced some protocol changes; ensure both client and server are upgraded to maintain compatibility

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

No vendor fix exists The vendor has not published a patch for this.

There is no version to upgrade to and no patch to apply. Every affected install stays exposed until the vendor ships a fix — or somebody else builds one.

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Free · runs locally
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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2026-53790 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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