Attack Chain

1. The attacker identifies the Electerm single-instance socket/pipe.
2. The attacker crafts a malicious JSON payload designed to trigger code execution. This payload leverages Electerm’s inter-process communication mechanism.
3. The attacker uses a separate process running under the same user account to send the malicious JSON payload to the Electerm socket/pipe.
4. Electerm receives the payload and, due to insufficient validation, processes the malicious instructions.
5. The malicious payload instructs Electerm to create a new tab.
6. The creation of the new tab triggers the execution of attacker-controlled code within the Electerm process.
7. The attacker-controlled code spawns a local process. This process could be a reverse shell, a data exfiltration tool, or any other arbitrary executable.
8. The attacker gains control of the spawned process, achieving local code execution.

Impact

Successful exploitation of CVE-2026-45353 allows a local attacker to execute arbitrary code within the context of the Electerm application. This can lead to a variety of malicious outcomes, including privilege escalation, data theft, and system compromise. The impact is limited to single-instance installations of Electerm. If successfully exploited, an attacker can potentially gain full control over the user’s session and sensitive data accessible by Electerm.

Recommendation

• Upgrade Electerm to a version greater than 3.8.8 to patch CVE-2026-45353, as indicated by the patch commit https://github.com/electerm/electerm/commit/0599e67069b00e376a2e962649aaad6096e63507.
• Deploy the Sigma rule “Detect Electerm Malicious Payload Delivery” to detect suspicious processes attempting to interact with Electerm’s single-instance socket.
• Monitor process creation events for unexpected child processes spawned by Electerm, leveraging the “Detect Electerm Suspicious Child Processes” Sigma rule.