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Fencer Vulns
critical 9.6

CVE-2026-50540 json

Kata Containers: Config Path Annotation Arbitrary File Loading

published 2026-08-07 3 mo ago modified 2026-09-09 1 mo ago also EUVD-2026-54679

cvss
9.6
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 37%
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. Prior to version 4.0.0, kata-runtime is vulnerable to host code execution via an unvalidated configuration path annotation. The runtime accepts an arbitrary io.katacontainers.config_path pod annotation and loads the referenced host TOML file without restriction. As a result, a pod user who can place a file at a host-visible path can supply a configuration that selects an attacker-controlled hypervisor or virtio-fs daemon binary, executing code as root on the host. This issue is fixed in version 4.0.0.

Patch / fix

  • katacontainers kata_containers 4.0.0
  • kata-containers Azure Linux 3.0 3.32.0.kata0-5
  • kata-containers-cc Azure Linux 3.0 3.15.0.aks0-20

azure linux advisories AZL-94610AZL-94622

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-2026-50540 updated cvss 8.8

kata-runtime: kata-runtime-rs: Kata Containers: Arbitrary code execution via manipulated configuration path

  • Red Hat Confidential Compute Attestation openshift-sandboxed-containers/osc-monitor-rhel9
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 kata-containers
    affected: no fix available

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
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
2 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.43% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 37% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 9.6 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

Affected products

  • kata-containers kata-containers

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation
  • CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory

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.