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CVE-2026-41579

runc: Malicious image with /dev symlink can trigger limited host filesystem integrity violations PUBLISHED

Description (CNA)

runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers according to the OCI specification. In versions prior to 1.3.6, 1.4.0-rc.1, 1.4.0-rc.12, 1.5.0-rc.1, and 1.5.0-rc.1, when setting up the container rootfs, setupPtmx and setupDevSymlinks call os.Remove and os.Symlink with a filepath.Join string which allow an image with /dev as a symlink to trick runc into deleting files called ptmx on the host or creating a hardcoded set of symlinks with specific names and targets in an arbitrary pre-existing host directory. This issue is not exploitable under Docker, because Docker creates a top-level read-only layer that masks any malicious /dev symlink present in the container image — unlike some other Linux container tooling, whose higher-level runtimes built on runc remain exposed to exploitation via a malicious image. This issue has been fixed in versions 1.3.6, 1.4.3 and 1.5.0.

Affected (CNA)

Vendor / productVersions
opencontainers / runcaffected < 1.3.6; affected >= 1.4.0-rc.1, < 1.4.3; affected >= 1.5.0-rc.1, < 1.5.0-rc.3

CWE

CWE-61

References

ADP enrichment

CISA-ADP

No English description supplied.

No references supplied.