AnyDesk Linux Root Exploit Is Public. The Fix Shipped in June With No CVE
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AnyDesk Linux Root Exploit Is Public. The Fix Shipped in June With No CVE
V12 published a working pre-approval exploit on October 8 for a heap overflow AnyDesk patched in 8.0.3 as a crash fix. No CVE or advisory exists yet.
A remote attacker who can reach TCP port 7070 on a Linux machine running AnyDesk 8.0.2 can run commands as root before anyone approves a connection, according to a working exploit the V12 security team published on GitHub on October 8. The bug was fixed in AnyDesk 8.0.3 in June, and as of October 9 it has no CVE identifier and no vendor advisory, The Hacker News reported.
The immediate instruction is to run AnyDesk 8.0.3 or later (8.1.0 is current) and to block inbound TCP/7070 on any host that cannot update yet.
What AnyPwn does on AnyDesk 8.0.2
The exploit, which V12 named AnyPwn, targets the handler for mode-5 stream packets in AnyDesk's session protocol. V12's README says the handler trusts a length supplied by the remote side before validating it. It then adds a 16-byte object header to that length using 32-bit arithmetic.
A declared length of 0xFFFFFFF0 wraps the sum to a tiny allocation while the object keeps its huge logical length. Attacker bytes are then copied past the end of the buffer. The proof of concept sprays the heap, corrupts an adjacent object's dispatch data, pivots the stack into a ROP chain and calls the system() PLT entry with a command of the attacker's choosing.
The README says the AnyDesk service normally runs as root on Linux, so "successful exploitation yields root command execution before desktop-control approval." The service must be running with anydesk --service.
What an attacker needs besides the bug
The preconditions are narrower than the headline. The README says the heap layout is probabilistic: if the groomed layout is wrong, "the exploit crashes the service instead of executing the command." The offsets are tied to one build on Linux x86_64, tested on Linux Mint 22.3, and "other AnyDesk builds require different offsets."
The attacker also needs a direct TCP path to port 7070, which excludes most hosts behind a NAT or a default firewall. V12 says the same code path is reachable through AnyDesk's relay servers. It validated that only with a minimal Frida trigger and did not run the full exploit over a relay, so the relay claim is unproven. The Hacker News reported AnyDesk's position that Windows and macOS are not affected.
Timeline: June patch, October exploit
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| June 22, 2026 | V12 announces the flaw, per The Hacker News |
| June 23, 2026 | AnyDesk acknowledges the report and ships 8.0.3 |
| October 8, 2026 | V12 publishes the exploit on GitHub |
| October 9, 2026 | No CVE and no AnyDesk advisory, per The Hacker News |
The Hacker News quotes AnyDesk's Linux changelog describing the 8.0.3 fix only as "fixed a bug that could lead to a crash." An administrator who reads changelogs rather than advisories would have had no reason to treat 8.0.3 as urgent. The V12 README also says the vendor "appears to have deleted (?) the 8.0.2 build" after V12 released a proof-of-concept video. The Hacker News says 8.0.2 is gone from AnyDesk's download page but still listed in the changelog.
The finder is Rick de Jager of the V12 security team. The README carries promotional material for V12, whose founders The Hacker News says previously built Zellic and led the Perfect Blue competitive hacking team.
Which builds are exposed
| Build | Status |
|---|---|
| 8.0.1 | Possibly vulnerable; V12 suspects the same code path, unconfirmed |
| 8.0.2 | Exploit published for this build |
| 8.0.3 | Fixed |
| 8.1.0 | Current release |
This is not the first heap overflow in the product. CVE-2025-27918, an integer overflow in user-image processing, was fixed in 7.0.0 in April 2025, and it affected every platform. That bug and this one have different mechanisms.
The gap between patch and paperwork is the story. The Apple CoreGraphics flaw carried an identifier and a federal deadline; this one has neither, and CISA's three-day catalogue deadlines under BOD 26-04 apply only to entries it lists.\n\nSince no CVE exists, scanners keyed to CVE identifiers will not flag 8.0.2. Inventory the AnyDesk version on Linux hosts directly, and watch for an identifier from the CVE program or an AnyDesk advisory, neither of which had appeared by October 9.
Sources
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