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Fencer Vulns
critical 9.4

CVE-2026-24834 json

Kata Container to Guest micro VM privilege escalation

published 2026-02-19 8 mo ago modified 2026-09-10 1 mo ago also EUVD-2026-7734 , GHSA-wwj6-vghv-5p64 , GO-2026-4517

cvss
9.4
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 15%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Kata Containers is an open source project focusing on a standard implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs) that perform like containers. In versions prior to 3.27.0, an issue in Kata with Cloud Hypervisor allows a user of the container to modify the file system used by the Guest micro VM ultimately achieving arbitrary code execution as root in said VM. The current understanding is this doesn’t impact the security of the Host or of other containers / VMs running on that Host (note that arm64 QEMU lacks NVDIMM read-only support: It is believed that until the upstream QEMU gains this capability, a guest write could reach the image file). Version 3.27.0 patches the issue.

Patch / fix

  • go github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/src/runtime 0.0.0-20260219090056-6a672503973b
  • katacontainers kata_containers 3.27.0
  • govulncheck-vulndb openSUSE Leap 15.6 0.0.20260226T182644-150000.1.149.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:0757-1

  • govulncheck-vulndb openSUSE Leap 16.0 0.0.20260723T184607-160000.1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:21483-1

  • kata-containers Azure Linux 3.0 3.19.1.kata2-6

azure linux advisories AZL-77976

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-24834 updated cvss 9.3

containerd-shim-kata-v2: Kata Containers: Arbitrary code execution in guest virtual machine via file system modification

  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 kata-containers
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat Confidential Compute Attestation openshift-sandboxed-containers/osc-monitor-rhel9
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
8 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.24% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 15% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/security/advisories/GHSA-wwj6-vghv-5p64 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 9.4 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CISA ADP 3.1 9.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
GitHub 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/src/runtime
<0.0.0-20260219090056-6a672503973b
0.0.0-20260219090056-6a672503973b

Affected products

  • kata-containers kata-containers
  • Red Hat Confidential Compute Attestation
  • Red Hat Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource
  • CWE-281 Improper Preservation of Permissions

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.