Remote Code Execution Vulnerability in FreeBSD's dhclient Component

CVE-2026-42511

What is CVE-2026-42511?

The vulnerability in FreeBSD's dhclient lies in the insecure processing of the BOOTP file field, which allows the insertion of unescaped double-quotes. This oversight leads to the potential for injection of arbitrary directives into the lease file. When the lease file is re-processed—such as during a system restart—the attacker-controlled directives can be executed by dhclient-script(8). This could enable a malicious DHCP server to run arbitrary code with root privileges, compromising the integrity and security of the affected system.

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