pamusb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary removable media. Prior to 0.9.0, the pusbpad_compare() function in src/pad.c only verified that the user-side pad (~/.pamusb/device.pad) could be read, but did not enforce that the system-side pad (the pad file on the USB device) was also present and readable. If the user-side pad was deleted or unreadable, the function returned a failure that was treated as non-fatal in certain code paths, allowing authentication to succeed without the USB device being verified. A local user can delete their own ~/.pamusb/device.pad to remove the USB device requirement and authenticate without the physical device. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.9.0.
{
"osv_generated_from": "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/47xxx/CVE-2026-47272.json",
"cwe_ids": [
"CWE-287",
"CWE-908"
],
"cna_assigner": "GitHub_M"
}