A vulnerability in the chmod utility of uutils coreutils allows users to bypass the --preserve-root safety mechanism. The implementation only validates if the target path is literally / and does not canonicalize the path. An attacker or accidental user can use path variants such as /../ or symbolic links to execute destructive recursive operations (e.g., chmod -R 000) on the entire root filesystem, leading to system-wide permission loss and potential complete system breakdown.
CWE-22