CVE-2020-16126

LOW

accountsservice < 0.6.55 - Denial of Service via Improper Privilege Management

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Exploitation Summary

EIP tracks 1 public exploit for CVE-2020-16126. PoCs published by zev3n.

AI-analyzed exploit summary This is a bash script exploit for CVE-2020-16126 and CVE-2020-16127, which leverages a vulnerability in the accounts-daemon to achieve local privilege escalation on Ubuntu systems with GNOME. The exploit manipulates the ~/.pam_environment file and interacts with the D-Bus interface to trigger the vulnerability.

Description

An Ubuntu-specific modification to AccountsService in versions before 0.6.55-0ubuntu13.2, among other earlier versions, improperly dropped the ruid, allowing untrusted users to send signals to AccountService, thus stopping it from handling D-Bus messages in a timely fashion.

Exploits (1)

nomisec WORKING POC 3 stars
by zev3n · poc
https://github.com/zev3n/Ubuntu-Gnome-privilege-escalation

This is a bash script exploit for CVE-2020-16126 and CVE-2020-16127, which leverages a vulnerability in the accounts-daemon to achieve local privilege escalation on Ubuntu systems with GNOME. The exploit manipulates the ~/.pam_environment file and interacts with the D-Bus interface to trigger the vulnerability.

Classification
Working Poc 95%
Attack Type
Lpe
Complexity
Moderate
Reliability
Reliable
Target: Ubuntu with GNOME (versions 20.04.1, 20.10, 18.04, 16.04 LTS)
Auth required
Prerequisites: Local access to an Ubuntu system with GNOME · User must be able to execute bash scripts · accounts-daemon must be running
devstral-2 · analyzed Feb 16, 2026 Full analysis →

References (1)

Core 1
Core References

Scores

CVSS v3 3.3
EPSS 0.0199
EPSS Percentile 83.8%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Details

CWE
CWE-269
Status published
Products (1)
freedesktop/accountsservice < 0.6.55
Published Nov 11, 2020
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026