---
id: CVE-2026-85649
title: >-
  (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
summary: >-
  (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…
severity: high
cvss: 7.9
cvssVector: 'CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N'
cwe:
  - CWE-252
  - CWE-636
published: '2026-09-04'
updated: '2026-09-08'
sourceUpdated: '2026-09-08T14:11:18.287'
source: NVD
sourceUrl: 'https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-85649'
references:
  - url: 'https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22169659'
    label: 5a6e4751-2f3f-4070-9419-94fb35b644e8
  - url: >-
      https://github.com/ChewKeanHo/software-actualizer/blob/v1.2.0/Shell/debian-minbase-install.sh#L788
    label: 5a6e4751-2f3f-4070-9419-94fb35b644e8
  - url: >-
      https://github.com/ChewKeanHo/software-actualizer/commit/50a0932ac705635d9af62955c353e7c6df003a61.patch
    label: 5a6e4751-2f3f-4070-9419-94fb35b644e8
  - url: 'https://github.com/ChewKeanHo/software-actualizer/releases/tag/v1.2.1'
    label: 5a6e4751-2f3f-4070-9419-94fb35b644e8
tags:
  - nvd
  - exploit-available
epss: 0.00207
epssPercentile: 0.11146
exploits:
  github: 1
  githubRepos:
    - 'https://github.com/ChewKeanHo/research-cve-2026-85649'
  checkedAt: '2026-09-21T15:30:59.721Z'
exploitAvailable: true
ingestedAt: '2026-09-08T15:33:26.960Z'
---

## Overview

(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.

## Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.