CVE-2024-9676: Podman: buildah: cri-o: symlink traversal vulnerability in the containers/storage library can cause denial of service (dos)

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2024-9676 is a medium (CVSS 6.5) vulnerability in redhat enterprise_linux. EPSS estimates a 1.32% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 70.9% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 15-10-2024
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 01-11-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

A vulnerability was found in Podman, Buildah, and CRI-O. A symlink traversal vulnerability in the containers/storage library can cause Podman, Buildah, and CRI-O to hang and result in a denial of service via OOM kill when running a malicious image using an automatically assigned user namespace (`--userns=auto` in Podman and Buildah). The containers/storage library will read /etc/passwd inside the container, but does not properly validate if that file is a symlink, which can be used to cause the library to read an arbitrary file on the host.

• CWE-22Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted DirectoryThe product uses external input to construct a pathname that is intended to identify a file or directory that is located underneath a restricted parent directory, but the product does not properly neutralize special elements within the pathname that can cause the pathname to resolve to a location that is outside of the restricted directory.