Product Affected

This issue affects all versions of Junos OS.
High

CVSS: v3.1: 7.3 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) 
CVSS: v4.0: 7 (CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:L/AU:Y/R:U/RE:M) 

Problem

A UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following vulnerability in the CLI of Juniper Networks Junos OS allows a local, authenticated attacker with low privileges to escalate their privileges to root which will lead to a complete compromise of the system.

When after a user has performed a specific 'file link ...' CLI operation, another users commits (unrelated configuration changes), the first user can login as root.

This issue affects Junos OS:

  • all versions before 23.2R2-S7,
  • 23.4 versions before 23.4R2-S6,
  • 24.2 versions before 24.2R2-S3,
  • 24.4 versions before 24.4R2-S2,
  • 25.2 versions before 25.2R2.
This issue does not affect versions 25.4R1 or later.

 

Juniper SIRT is not aware of any malicious exploitation of this vulnerability.

 

This issue was discovered during external security research.

Solution

The following software releases have been updated to resolve this specific issue: 23.2R2-S7, 23.4R2-S6, 24.2R2-S3, 24.4R2-S2, 25.2R2, and all subsequent releases.

 

This issue is being tracked as 1865633 which is visible on the Customer Support website.

 

Note: Juniper SIRT's policy is not to evaluate releases which are beyond End of Engineering (EOE) or End of Life (EOL).

Workaround

To prevent exploitation, use access controls to keep users from performing 'file link' operations.

Severity Assessment

Information for how Juniper Networks uses CVSS can be found at KB 16446 [juniper.net] "Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) and Juniper's Security Advisories."

Modification History

2026-04-08: Initial Publication

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