CVE-2026-40228

Publication date 10 April 2026

Last updated 13 November 2026

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

In systemd 259, systemd-journald can send ANSI escape sequences to the terminals of arbitrary users when a "logger -p emerg" command is executed, if ForwardToWall=yes is set.

Read the notes from the security team

Why is this CVE low priority?

This is a minor issue, terminals should block malicious ANSI escapes

Learn more about Ubuntu priority

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
systemd	26.10 stonking	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	26.04 LTS resolute	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	25.10 questing	Ignored end of life, was deferred [2026-11-13]
	24.04 LTS noble	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	22.04 LTS jammy	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	20.04 LTS focal	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	18.04 LTS bionic	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	16.04 LTS xenial	Vulnerable, fix deferred
	14.04 LTS trusty	Vulnerable, fix deferred

Notes

mdeslaur

As of 2026-11-13, there does not appear to be a fix for this issue from systemd developers. Both pull requests listed below were closed with no merge. This is a related issue, but doesn't cover the journald attack vector this CVE is about: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/4bf9db731445ba72a9e5097561e1883dfe1183d8

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
systemd	Upstream: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/44453 Upstream: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/44459

Severity score breakdown

CVSS version: CVSS v3.0

Base score 2.9 · Low

Base metrics

Parameter	Value
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	High
Privileges required	None
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality impact	None
Integrity impact	Low
Availability impact	None

Scores

Parameter	Value
Base score	2.9 · Low
Exploitability score	-
Impact score	-

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