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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.3

CVE-2026-55686 json

Podman: WORKDIR symlink traversal vulnerability

published 2026-06-18 4 mo ago modified 2026-11-03 5 d ago also GHSA-q6r4-3wmg-fwcq , GO-2026-5568 , EUVD-2026-39808

cvss
5.3
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 34%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Podman is a tool for managing OCI containers and pods. From 3.0.0 until 5.7.1, running a malicious container image where the WORKDIR path contains a symlink can create a directory or modify ownership on the host filesystem. Modified ownership is less likely to happen as that requires help from an untrusted/malicious process that mutates the host filesystem tree during dereferencing of the WORKDIR path, to trigger a race condition. This vulnerability is fixed in 5.7.1.

Patch / fix

  • go github.com/containers/podman/v5 5.7.1
  • podman_project podman 5.7.1
  • podman Debian 14 5.8.1+ds1-2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-55686

  • podman hummingbird 1 6.0.0-1.hum1
  • podmansh hummingbird 1 6.0.0-1.hum1
  • podman-tests hummingbird 1 6.0.0-1.hum1
  • podman-docker hummingbird 1 6.0.0-1.hum1
  • podman-remote hummingbird 1 6.0.0-1.hum1
  • podman-machine hummingbird 1 6.0.0-1.hum1

red hat advisories RHSA-2026:29954

  • podman Linux Micro 6.1 5.4.2-slfo.1.1_6.1
  • podman SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 5.4.2-160000.6.1
  • podman Enterprise Storage 7.1 4.9.5-150300.9.83.1
  • podman SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.4 +3 more 4.9.5-150400.4.79.1
  • podman Linux Micro 6.0 4.9.5-13.1
  • podman SLES for SAP 15 SP6, SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP6-LTSS +5 more 4.9.5-150500.3.78.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:24378-1SUSE-SU-2026:24233-1SUSE-SU-2026:3662-1SUSE-SU-2026:3652-1SUSE-SU-2026:23205-1SUSE-SU-2026:3536-1

  • podman openSUSE Leap 16.0 5.4.2-160000.6.1
  • govulncheck-vulndb openSUSE Leap 16.0 0.0.20260723T184607-160000.1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:22089-1openSUSE-SU-2026:21483-1

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-2026-55686 updated cvss 5.8

github.com/containers/podman: Podman: Host filesystem modification via malicious container image WORKDIR symlink

  • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2 ansible-automation-platform-26/eda-controller-rhel9, ansible-automation-platform-27/eda-controller-rhel9 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 podman, podman-tests, podman-docker, podman-remote, podman-gvproxy, podman-plugins, +2 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 podman, podman-tests, podman-docker, podman-remote, podman-gvproxy, podman-plugins, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 podman Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 podman, podman-tests, podman-docker, podman-remote, podman-gvproxy, podman-plugins, +4 more Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 podman, openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    +2 more products
    Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4 container-native-virtualization/ocp-virt-validation-checkup-rhel9 Red Hat Quay 3 quay/quay-builder-rhel8, quay/quay-builder-rhel9
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Hardened Images podman 6.0.0-1.hum1, podmansh 6.0.0-1.hum1, podman-tests 6.0.0-1.hum1, podman-docker 6.0.0-1.hum1, podman-remote 6.0.0-1.hum1, podman-machine 6.0.0-1.hum1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:29954

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
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
4 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.40% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 34% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/podman-container-tools/podman/security/advisories/GHSA-q6r4-3wmg-fwcq referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
GitHub 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go github.com/containers/podman/v5
<5.7.1
5.7.1
go github.com/containers/podman/v4
<=4.9.5
all versions
 no fix listed
go github.com/containers/podman/v3
<=3.4.7
all versions
 no fix listed
go github.com/containers/podman
all versions
 no fix listed
go github.com/containers/podman/v2
all versions
 no fix listed

Affected products

  • podman-container-tools podman

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-61 UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
  • CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access

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.